


xenophilia

by luna65



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 08:00:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna65/pseuds/luna65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>We've met the alien, and it is us.  An off-kilter romance.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	xenophilia

**Author's Note:**

> Oberlina, a famous-by-association blogger, is restless and jaded in her relationship with her boyfriend Taran, a well-known painter. Their encounters with the mysterious Ben, not so much an individual as a cipher, lead Obe to begin questioning everything, including her own failings.
> 
> Trigger warnings for profanity and some sexist/ableist language (for the purposes of characterization), as well as suggestions of alien abduction scenarios, for those sensitive to such things. Also tense-shifting as purposeful conversational tone.

The light hit his face all wrong, the guy at my kitchen table.  I’d noticed him half an hour earlier, or so, when the crush in front of the counter where all the booze was cleared enough that I could move beyond the refrigerator and the stove, and there was this guy, who I’d never seen before, sitting at the table and staring at a blini like it was a foreign object.  Like he’d never seen caviar before, though he looked like the kind of guy who ate it all the time.  The kind of features they call “patrician:” cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, strong chin, cupid’s bow mouth, glowing eyes which seemed to be somewhere between green and blue.  But from a certain angle, in a certain light, there was something creepy about it all.  Strange, kinda.

Then Taran started yelling for more food and my reverie ended as I shifted again into hostess mode.  People came and went, ate and drank, fawned over and feted my boyfriend, the artist of the moment.  As many post-gallery gatherings as I’d hosted since Taran and I became a couple, I would never get used to so many people in my apartment, especially people I didn’t even know.

He loved it, of course.  Taran thrived on attention and praise.  A crowd of tall people encircled his equally tall form on the balcony outside, and I vaguely wondered how many pounds it was rated to hold.  Occasionally a slither of cigarette smoke would trickle inward along with the frigid air, but there were too many people in the apartment to close it altogether.  Taran smokes, so of course not only the smokers followed him outside, but as many people as could fit.  I took a moment to breathe and check my makeup (which hadn’t melted, thankfully) and look at this guy sitting at my table.  He was eating the blini now, but in a careful clinical fashion.

“Caviar is an acquired taste,” I said, leaning on the countertop, looking at him over the tops of various bottles.  Trite, yes.  But I’m not known for my witty repartee, as Taran is fond of reminding me.

People ask me why I became involved with Taran.  It’s not as if he doesn’t have anything going for him: he’s talented and handsome, charismatic and although at times an arrogant asshole, he backs it up with his actual abilities.  It’s not a get-out-of-Jerkville-free card, of course, but he can cash the checks his sarcastic ego writes.  And he’s not a bad lay, mostly.  But mainly he’s my platform, in professional terms.  Also my parents are cultish figures in their respective fields: my father is an slightly-known eccentric anthropologist.  My mother is a textile artist whose does things with fabric and yarn which others do with paint and film.  So these connections make me interesting by association, and that, coupled with my own wry and skewed worldview, have afforded me the bizarre ephemeral state known as Being Famous on the Internet.  Every time I namedrop Taran or my parents (with applicable links) on my blog, my readership goes up, ever so slightly, and more hits means more money. 

My mom thinks blogging is for teenagers, and is vaguely worried I’m ruining my life.  My parents expected something concrete from me, despite the evidence of my generation not being particularly interested in that aspect of development.  Or it could just be that _concrete_ has taken on some other meaning now.

The guy – who looks sort of alien, now that I think about it – chewed slowly and took a drink of water.   He looked up at me, blinking rapidly.

“It is not sweet,” he declared, and that was about the weirdest thing I’d ever heard in relation to caviar.  “I know what sweet is.”  I expected another part to that statement, but it never came.  His accent identified him as English, which didn’t surprise me – as most of Taran’s friends and associates are fellow expats – but I couldn’t place him at all.

“Uh, I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” I said, coming forward with hand extended.  “I’m Oberlina – everybody calls me Obe – Taran lives here with me.”

He smiled, with that beautiful mouth, but like he wasn’t used to smiling.  “I’m Ben,” taking my hand with a slow solemnity which was much like when he ate.  His grasp was somewhere between limp and forceful, assessing the extremity clasped with his own.  I let go after a few seconds and moved over to the sink, attempting some pre-emptive washing-up.

“So do you know Taran from uni?  Or did you grow up together?”

He frowned.  “No we just met today.  At the bank.”

I had to set down the pan I was hoisting, about to drain the grease out, lest I drop it.  _Ah, that fucking bastard!  He does have a secret account and that’s where all his money goes!_

Taran is basically a kept man.  Kept by me, that is, and although it’s true I don’t want for money thanks to my share of my paternal grandmother’s estate and various investments, I figure the favorite center spread boy of _Artforum_ and _frieze_ can cough up some fucking rent and utilities and groceries once in a while.  But he claimed his manager Alan – a hairy behemoth of a man who looked like he stepped out of a Tolkien novel – kept all his money for him and I’d have to present receipts in order to get any.  I find it a ridiculous assertion, but Taran has a habit of underestimating my credulity.

“What was he doing at the bank?”

“He had a big check, he said.  I had one too.”  He paused, and smiled again, that weird ersatz smile.

“Well you must have had lots to talk about, what with you both being so flush.”

More blinking.  “I thought everyone was supposed to have money.”

I smirked, wiping my hands with a dishtowel after dishing out the last of the hummus.  “Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you?  Word of advice: don’t lend Taran any money or you’ll never see it again.” 

“I don’t believe he needed any.” 

“Oh no, of course not, his paintings sell for six figures to people who don’t know any fucking better.”  I stopped, empty beer bottle in my hand, looked furtively across to the far wall and the balcony.  They were all still out there: smoking and laughing at Taran’s snarky stories.  _Whew._   He didn’t care what I said to him in private, but the cardinal rule in public was solidarity: we’re all insanely happy to be on Team Taran.

And what was I _doing_ , whining to a guy I didn’t even know?  Sometimes I scare myself, it’s like all my disenchantment catches up with me and then I’m crying and eating ice cream and watching Lifetime.  Again, so very clichéd.

I’ve even blogged about it, to prove I’m Just Like You, which is one of those things you have to do with your audience, you see, but not _too_ often.  They prefer that your life be better than theirs, that’s why they care about it enough to keep reading.

 

 

It was like he was there one minute, and not the next.  So very odd.  It was after two and I was asking – not telling, though I was on my way to **that** – Taran to get the stragglers the _fuck_ out of my apartment so I could go to bed, and I looked over and he was gone.  My bratty boyfriend rolled his big brown eyes (which I have a hard time resisting when he trains them on me) and sighed and said, “You always fucking ruin my parties, Obe, why are you such an old lady?”

And yeah, it was painful to contemplate – even as I was wondering where the hell Ben had gone – that Taran had pegged it: I was really his mom, not his girlfriend.  He was older than me by two years, but emotionally…well, I don’t even want to guess.  It makes me tired to think about it. 

When we finally went to bed and Taran turned away from me with dramatic exhalations and much fluffing of pillows and yanking of bedclothes – a full-body pout - I stared at his back for a while in the half-dark, his dark wavy hair and smooth slightly dusky skin.  Our choice of bed was enormous due to his height and my side of it felt distant and isolated.. Then I stared at the ceiling and thought about Ben, and why he might be the kind of guy you’d invite to a party within hours of meeting him.  To me he was more a cipher but he’d likely said just the right things to charm Taran, who was a sucker for anyone who recognized him.

 

 

Ben was touching my face and his hands were cold and he said _why do you think you’re lost_ and I woke up.  Slightly after six and my heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t go back to sleep anyway, now that Taran had rolled over onto his back and was snoring somewhere in the 90-decibel range.  I got up and made coffee and stood at the sliding glass door, looking out at the city under gray fog.  It stank out on the balcony – and it would stay that way till it rained – and I debated whether to start cleaning up now or wait until I’d eaten a bowl of Special K Chocolatey Delight and showered and dressed.  I had to write about the show and the party and upload my photos,  I was sure even now people were checking my blog and making huffy sounds of frustration at the lack of an update.  I was expected to immediately comment on anything to do with Taran.  And I wanted to accomplish all this before my _enfant terrible_ woke up demanding a Full English. 

We only met in the first place because he’d tasted my goulash at another party and he roamed around asking everyone who’d cooked it.  When I ‘fessed up he gave me a megawatt smile and asked, “Where have you been all my life?”

As corny as it was, in that moment, his charm was lethal.  And here I am.

 

 

My mom called around seven, she’s an early riser like me.  I was clicking through all the photos I’d taken, deciding on the best ones, especially of Taran.  I didn’t like photos of the two of us – he’s nearly a foot taller than me and we look ridiculous standing next to each other – so early on in the public part of our relationship I’d learned to be behind the camera instead.

“Hi Mom,” I yawed, pushing my greasy hair back from my face.  “What’s up?”

“I got a package from your father.”

“Oh yeah?  What’d he send you?”

“Film.  Apparently he can’t get it developed in Port Moresby.”

“I find that incredibly hard to believe.  It’s not like Papua New Guinea is as primitive as it used to be.”

She sighed.  “Well, it’s here, and I don’t know where to take it.  Can you find out for me, hon, please?”

“Yeah okay.  I’ll be over tomorrow.  I’ve got to clean up the aftermath here.”

“How did it go?”

“Great as always.  Despite this crappy economy people can’t wait to buy Taran’s creepy paintings.”

She clucked her tongue, I could just imagine her long elegant face frowning at me.  I inherited the apple-cheeked rotund features of my father’s ancestors.  Taran likes to say he loves me for my _peasant arse and filthy mouth_.   But it’s really my cooking.  Every serious relationship I have been in was because the guy loved my cooking.  My last boyfriend killed himself after his mother died of leukemia, but fell in love with me because I could make cabbage rolls just like her.  Sadly though, cabbage rolls alone aren’t always enough to ease the pain.

“It’s good he’s relevant and successful, because not all talented artists are so lucky.”

She’s referring to herself, somewhat, but my mom has a group of admirers who fight to the death every time she decides to create a piece to sell.  I have several quilts in my possession which would support me for several years or so if I did decide to unload them through a dealer or auction house.

“So what’s Dad doing now?”

“His letter said something about living in the interior with a tribe waiting to spot some rare butterfly, I think.”

I think the whole thing has gone beyond academics.  Dad enjoys being primitive and about five years ago took off for parts unknown, knowing my mother is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.  So if he wants to play Tarzan neither of us are particularly fussed; and he’d only be disappointed if he knew what I was up to now.  He’d say that if I was going to take up with an artist then we should be living on a commune somewhere, focusing on the purity of unmediated expression.  He’d declare Taran to be decadent, narcisstic, and exploiting the notion of tragedy for profit.

Yes, people still talk like that, though my dad has always done it.  Even back in high school he was a snobbish insufferable geek.  That’s what my mom loved about him, when they met in grad school.  If my weakness is disdain, then my mother’s is arrogance.

I walked by the bedroom and she broke into my monologue about the party.

“Is that Taran snoring?”

“Yeah.  My morning serenade.”

“Well that’s not normal, dear, you should tell him to go to the doctor.  He could have sleep apnea, it’s dangerous.”

Taran hated doctors, of course, because the first thing they told him was to quit smoking.

Our conversation petered out eventually and I finished my update: a humorous account of the previous evening with photos and plenty of hyperlinks.  I titled it, “My boyfriend: prettiest pony at the show” which was my way of mocking him, but appearing to be affectionate about it.  And maybe I was, at least a little bit.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about Ben and his strangeness.  It felt like cheating, almost, my musings.

I had done some cleaning and fried up eggs and bacon for Taran.  I drew the line at baked beans and sausage, because I didn’t want him farting all goddamn day, given that he would probably be too hungover to leave the apartment, but I did include tomatoes, mushrooms and toast.  The plate went into the oven to keep warm and I wrestled a large garbage bag out to the chute at the end of the hallway.  When I returned I was nearly shit myself to find Alan at the table, eating Taran’s breakfast like he’d been there all along.

“How the fuck did you get in here?!" 

“Door was open,” he answered, between forkfuls of food.

I paused to consider that maybe there was a hole in the building’s security, and what Ben had told me was a cleverly-concocted lie, but I didn’t think he _could_ lie.  It seemed beyond his abilities.  Yes, I am constructing an entire pathology for a man I’ve only met in passing…so?

“That was supposed to be Taran’s breakfast.”

“Well it’s mine now, innit?”

Only a man of Alan’s stature – he was, like, somewhere near seven foot tall – could get away with such casual disdain for propriety, but he was by all accounts a loyal and savvy manager, he believed in Taran’s vision before anyone else did.  So I went to awaken the Pony, climbing onto the bed and studying his allure, even snoring, drooling, and with a serious case of bedhead.

“Taran, wake up.”  I shook him slightly and he snorted then his eyes opened and the shadows beneath them were deep-set.

“Wottimeizzit?”

“After ten.  Alan’s here.”

“Fry-up?”

“Alan’s eating it, I’ll make you some more.”

He grunted in assent and shifted, burrowing into the bedclothes.  I didn’t think to touch him, Taran wasn’t a morning person.  The first time I’d tried to wake him up by sucking his dick got me shoved out of bed and asked _wot the fuck you doing?_   After a few more grumpy rejections I gave up on sex before midday.

 

 

Alan read aloud the review in the _Times_ cultural section and Taran preened as he shoveled in his breakfast and downed several cups of tea brewed for ten minutes: black like his lungs.

“Hey so, that Ben guy,” I said as I scrubbed the cast-iron frying pan I used daily, “he was weird, huh?”

“Who?” Taran asks, not looking up from the newspaper.

“Ben, that tall guy who looked kinda freakish.  Said he met you at the bank.”

“The bank?”  He looked up, wide-eyed innocence but I thought I saw panic in those big brown eyes.  “Wot would I be doing at the bank?” 

“He said you were depositing a big check,” I continued, but Alan ended up speaking over me with his own observation, which I know he did on purpose to attempt misdirection.

“Oh yeah that tall chap, skinny as, wasn’t he?  Rather like an insect, I thought.”

“Well I don’t recall him at all, I don’t know why he said that.”  Taran pushed his plate away, lit a cigarette and Alan followed suit.

“Guys c’mon!  Smoke on the balcony, please!”

“It’s too cold out there and it’s just one fucking cigarette!”

And what was I going to do, right?  Although I guess I could have gone after them with a spray bottle full of water, with Taran declaring me a _crazy bitch_.  Besides, it’s not entirely sane to harass someone in need of nicotine.  It wasn’t even the smell I minded – they both smoked Dunhills – but the carcinogens.  Most of my friends were aghast, smoking was a definite dealbreaker with them.  And I wondered, not for the first time, if there was some inner self-destructive impulse which enjoyed proximity to a vice which was rapidly becoming passé, politically incorrect, and reviled.

 

 

They retreated to the spare bedroom after a while, which Taran had commandeered as a makeshift studio: lining the floor with tarps, installing a exhaust fan in the window, bringing in ratty old paint-splattered furniture, and his friends would hang out and bullshit as much as Taran ever got any painting done, but occasionally I would find him in there squinting at a canvas as he smoked and pondered how to portray whatever subject was next to be exploited.  So much for my edict there, because he insisted on smoking while he worked, informing me that nicotine is a focusing drug and his work required absolute mental focus, like he was performing calculus rather than daubing paint onto a flat surface.

He had a platform too, you see; he painted abstractions of disasters: man-made, natural, accidental, intentional.  Mixed-media, though he primarily worked in acrylics.  I found his work queasily fascinating, but he was such an attention whore it was difficult to take him seriously when he started blathering on about man’s inability to accept his place in the universe when compared with the forces of nature.

It was more a case of our mutual affinity.  Taran liked to note we both came “from clever people,” and thus we belonged together, regardless of what either one of us actually did with our lives.  He certainly had no opinion about what I did, save when it was useful for him.  But he didn’t ridicule it either, which I appreciated, as former boyfriends were not so charitable.  My dead ex-boyfriend had worked for the Parks Department, he thought the Internet was a waste of time.  I didn’t ask for much, but I did draw the line at being considered ridiculous by someone I was fucking.

I cleaned some more, made a few code changes on the blog, and wrote a list of all the errands I had to run as I shuffled through the mail from the previous day.  Oddly, some kind of card with my name on the envelope appeared to have been stuffed in with the other items, it was a reproduction of one of Taran’s paintings: _Krakatoa, 1883_.

Fiery rivers of lava as the island literally blew apart.  The message was inscribed on the back side, although it wasn’t intended as stationary.

_Pleasant to meet you – Ben._

My hand was trembling and I blushed even as I was sitting there alone at the kitchen table, in the same spot he had occupied at the party.  The note was addressed to me, not the two-headed monster of _Taran &Oberlina_.  Finally someone seemed to see **me** , and that was shocking.  It shouldn’t have been, of course, because people should be viewed on their own merits no matter who they are, but over the last year I had become inured to living in Taran’s shadow.  Any discontent was my own for remaining, but a victim needs a villain, and Taran made it so easy.

Ben’s handwriting was what I’d call clinical, very angular and unambiguous, another thing which struck me as _alien_.

“Obe!  Can you bring me a cuppa?”

The _please_ is implied, but never spoken.

“Yes master,” I muttered, getting up to plug in the kettle.

 

 

Next morning I took the train out to the ‘burbs and it was a nice quiet walk to my mom’s house.  Okay, it was the family home but purchased with my mom’s money.  If my dad had his way we would have been living in Africa or something but my mother was insistent in her belief that stability was best for a child.  She’d ensured I had the best of everything and we both came to view my dad as a sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, occasional interloper in our domestic tidiness.  My poor taste in men was likely due to his example, like I was unconsciously imprinted upon the idea of a emotionally distant male whom I could tether to me with my money.  And money will buy you quite a nice prize...if you’re willing to do the upkeep.  You can’t expect a real man if you assume the balance of power, however, but I find real men overrated and mythical, in large part.

She was out on the sunporch, looking like Dina Merrill in a cashmere sweater set and drinking coffee.  She smiled like no one else smiles to see me and we sat there for a while just staring out at the backyard.  The peaceful ambiance tends to unnerve me because I’ve lived in the city for so long now, if there’s no traffic noise and jets overhead I get jumpy.  Eventually she gestured to a side table and a round metal canister.

“There it is.”

“Oh wait, film, like, sixteen millimeter?  I thought you meant regular camera film.”

“No hon, he filmed some kind of coming-of-age ceremony but nobody processes that kind where he is.”

“Hmm.  Well I’ve gotta do some research then, but I’m sure I can find a lab.”

She squeezed my hand.  “So what’s Taran doing?”

“Right now?  Sleeping, of course.  He’ll drag his ass out of bed in a few hours, whine because he has to cook his own breakfast, smoke half a pack of cigarettes, drink a pot of tea, throw some clothes on, go downtown to his loft and sulk for a while, do a little research, bitch to Alan about not getting enough press for the show, ingest more nicotine and caffeine, and by then it will be dinner time and he’ll come home and yell, ‘Where’s my dinner and where the fuck were you all day?!’”

My mom rolled her eyes at me; I knew it was due to my narrative and not Taran’s character.  She romanticized him a bit because he was an artist.  Deep down I think she was hoping she could turn my dad into a writer who would prefer to chronicle far away places rather than actually go to them, but that didn’t work out, obviously.

“I meant, what subject is he working on now?”

“Oh I dunno, I think he might be trying to finish his Chernobyl painting again.  That’s what he always does when he’s stuck.”

“Well the review in the _Times_ was quite good, relatively speaking.”

“Yeah well, it’s never enough for him.  If it’s not unanimous, universal praise then he’s making himself miserable thinking about all the people who don’t know what a genius he is, and worse, don’t care.”

She tossed her champagne blonde hair and chuckled.  “Honestly Obe, you’d think he was crazy, the way you talk about him.”

“Of course he’s crazy, he’s a painter!”

My mom and I tended to agree that graphic artists were the most neurotic of the lot.

 

 

Because I was out-and-about I had arranged to meet my best friend Cait at the Calorie Counter, a diner in the boho section which was unabashedly proud of their high-cholesterol food.  The motto – as printed on the menus and painted on the front window – proclaimed _Our Food Tastes Good!_   But I was forbidden to bring Taran along because it was her turf, she ate there every day.  She knew that he would love it if he knew about it, and she’d have to find another place for her comfort food fix.

I love Cait because she’s not a sheeple.  When I invited her to one of Taran’s shows a few weeks after we started dating, she circled around the gallery sipping a martini and eventually returned to my side, then whispered. “I don’t get it.”

Because, really, there was a part of me which didn’t get Taran’s work either.

I slid into the naugahyde booth with a grateful sigh – after walking hither and yon for most of the day – to see my two-toned coiffed friend tucking into a Reuben with great pleasure, with fries and an extra side of Thousand Island dressing for the dipping.  She set down her sandwich half and after chewing and swallowing and sipping Coke Zero she gave me a look of concern. 

“Dude, you look **terrible**.”

I replied with a _what the fuck_ look, and she gaped in exasperated reply.

“Like I **want** you going around looking like that?!”

Cait was one to talk, her gray roots were showing, the rest of her burgundy dye job had gone brassy, enormous dark circles under her brown-green eyes and a thin-lipped mouth which could best be described as _pinched_ (and I never knew what that meant till I met her), but she had a passive-aggressive way of showing concern.  She was a mid-list author who gave up a promising career in geology after discovering she was claustrophobic during a disastrous field expedition in Bolivia, and so went on to write a series of novels about a fucked-up psychic named Phaedra who was quite heavily based on herself.  Her created persona meant she wore black, white and gray all the time, but never in the correct combinations.  To wit: she had on oyster canvas cargo pants, a black t-shirt, and a heather gray hoodie.  Her Keds were blindingly white, I think she bleached the shit out of them on a weekly basis.

And she was a complete bitch, but like Taran talented enough to get away with it, most of the time.  She didn’t care who she upset, figuring if they were so thin-skinned they weren’t worth her time anyway.

“Says the girl who can’t dress herself,” I murmured as I signaled the waitress by waving my hands in the air like I didn’t care.  I ordered what I always ordered: a chocolate peanut butter sundae and two sides of bacon.  I considered a Monte Cristo to go but I didn’t need to commit just then.  Cait was fellating her pickle, trying to get me to laugh.

“How’s the Brat Prince?” she asked after I rewarded her with a chuckle.

“Bratty as ever, of course.  Even more so because I figured out he’s been stashing money away.”

She gasped and slammed her fist down on the table.  “See I told you he was a bastard!  Not only that but a terrorist!”

Several patrons turned to stare, it’s not a word one can use lightly any more, after all.

“Dude, reel in it, okay?”

“I’m serious!  He’s giving you cancer!  On purpose!”

I had to laugh, I couldn’t help it.  “Anyone who smokes – including you, I’d like to point out – could be accused of the same thing.”

“No I’m just giving _myself_ cancer, that’s different.  I’m not inflicting it on anyone else.  But he smokes in your apartment on purpose.  He _knows_ you don’t want him to.  Hence my analogy.”

People say ex-smokers are the worst when it comes to judging their former vice, but Cait was the only actual smoker I knew who held the practice in equally high contempt while still engaging in it.

“I tend to think the nicotine is the actual selfish entity and he’s only the vessel.  But anyway, speaking of little boys, how’s Sammy?”

“Fine.  They broke even this past year, can you believe it?  Apparently people love those t-shirts.”

Sammy was the bass player in a hippie jam band kind of group and the relatively high preponderance of college students and post-granolas in the city and the surrounding suburbs helped keep their relatively obscure career afloat…that and their band logo was simple but iconic, and adorned all their merchandising.  Sammy was adorable – all huge eyes and fluffy hair - but extremely odd; I’d long given up figuring out what all his cryptic remarks meant.  Cait had as well, but said he was an amazing sexual partner, and that weren’t nothing (a bit of Limey wisdom Alan was fond of stating).

“Well good, at least he’s not _entirely_ sucking you dry then.”

“Only my pussy!” she proclaimed, cackling wickedly.

I snickered and shook my head and engaged in my own cholesterol-laden vice, crumbling bacon on top of my sundae and digging in.

 

 

“Carrington’s?” Cait asked me once we were finished and outside.  She stood downwind of me to light up.  Now I truly couldn’t deal with that smell, she smokes Camels which I find disgusting.

“Ugh, as if I need any more books to add to that giant pile of books silently reproaching me from the side of the bed…and the living room…and the closet…and under my desk.”

She started walking there anyway and I followed along on the side where the smoke wasn’t.  “Damn dude, if you just turned off the fucking TV –“

“That’s not me, I told you!”

“Yeah but you always get sucked into it, don’t you?  Make Taran watch TV in the other room and that way you can read in peace.”

“Hell, I might as well make him move out if I did that.”

“Well maybe you should.  Grow a fucking spine, goddamn it.”

Cait loved telling other people what to do, that’s why she dated someone half her age who she was also, mostly, supporting.  It was the only way in which she controlled her life, otherwise she was at the mercy of her publisher, cranking out two books a year and being pressured to come up with another series.  We reached the bookshop and stopped at the coffee cart outside.  I paid for more caffeine for the both of us and sat at a café table under the awning.  Cait stood looking at the street, finishing her cigarette.  She carefully extinguished it and placed the butt in an empty Altoids tin in her jacket pocket.

“They’re threatening to drop me again, if I don’t submit a proposal for a new series,” she said, picking her up her macchiato from the table. 

“Doesn’t Beth have something to say about that?”

“Not really.  I have a work-for-hire contract, at-will employment.  You know that’s no better than sanctioned slavery.”

I did know.  I’d flirted with the idea of becoming professional myself – Cait says I’m a better writer than she is but I’m lazy – and the contract I’d been offered by an imprint of one of the Big Six was laughable, really.  If I’d actually had to work for a living I would have still required a second job.  So I figured any money I made from my blog was my own, and I could write what I wanted.  Besides, as much as I love to read, love books – the sheer _fact_ of them, beyond their contents - there’s already too many fucking books in the world as it is and that’s why most writers are starving, or nearly so.  We _all_ should be doing something far more important.

(There Mom, there’s one point for you.)

“So –“

“I dunno.  I guess I should churn out some crap under a different name.  I don’t even think it matters what it is, it’s just how it is now.  All mid-listers are expected to pull double-and-triple duty since our sales will never amount to much anyway.”

“Not unless you sell the media rights.”

“Yeah well, there’s already TV dramas about psychics, so I think that leaves Phaedra out.  Believe me, I’m not afraid to whore her out to Hollywood, but it just ain’t happenin.’”

I thought some producer could definitely sell the idea to a premium cable channel – lots of sex and violence and creepiness – and Cait could reap the reward-by-proxy of higher sales figures.  Or if it could be adapted to comics… _something_.  Her series was good, she deserved at least not to worry about losing this gig.  For a moment I thought about Taran and then I had to stop myself, it was an old argument…I bet back in antiquity the first artists were squabbling over who was good, who was making a bunch of crap.

Fuck this was depressing.

“I feel your plight, babe, but I think we’re getting bummed out.  Caffeine and depression aren’t necessarily a good mix.”

“Yeah c’mon, let’s get cultured.”

Carrington’s was a collector’s bookstore: the owner would not accept certain authors or genres but on the other hand wasn’t adverse to the joys of kitsch, but it had to be vintage – meaning at least 30 years old – in order to qualify.  I love to just wander around and pull out books at random and read a little bit.  I usually ended up with cookbooks while Cait loved to collect old science books and pulp sci-fi novels from the 1960s.  Inside it was as quiet as a church and gave off a wonderful scent of polished wood and old paper.  We each wandered away to our respective interests and I was looking through a stack of recent acquisitions when something told me to look up.  Intuition, I guess?  But there he was, walking across the street as if he had no idea what traffic was and the terrible harm it could bring to a jaywalker. 

Ben, striding along, looking beautiful and strange all at the same time.

 

 

In the moments before Ben reached the other side of the street I had a flashback to just a few weeks prior, Taran and I attended a fundraising dinner for some disaster relief charity and of course he **had** to be there.  Alan wasn’t allowed to tag along to such events because he looked so damn scary.  Taran hated formal events and rebelled by wearing jeans and a t-shirt with his only concession to dressing up being a black Armani blazer.  Granted, his t-shirt was silk and his jeans were obscenely expensive, but even though he really couldn’t look bad if he tried I wanted to slap him.  I can remember the heat of my anger, my face flushed just to recall it.  The menu was contemporary haute cuisine: lots of small portions like a tasting menu but all of it so decadent I felt myself getting full halfway through.

“Ah Christ I hate this fucking fa –“

And I knew exactly what he was going to say: _faggot food_.  I literally could not take him anywhere grown-up.  And I was so fucking tired of his tantrums; I leaned over and gripped his arm hard, digging my nails in, hissing between my teeth.

“Stop it!  You **will not** use that word in public or so help me I will knock you the fuck out with this plate.”

It was hot, and heavy – the really good kind of porcelain – so I knew I could do it.  His eyes went wide with shock and disdain and I gave as good as I got as I glared at him.  I felt like I could blow shit up, like I could shoot lasers with my brain.  I have half my mom’s DNA but the only good physical trait I ended up with are her polished amber eyes.  When I’m upset they tend to go a bit yellow and Taran says I look “witchy.”  So I let my eyes say _oh yes asshole I will put the mother of all hexes on your ass if you act a fool so straighten the fuck up **now**_. 

And he was mad, no doubt, but I could tell he had a boner too.  Fighting turns him on, he never fucks so well as in the aftermath of a shouting match or anger-laden standoff.  And I was just so tired of dealing with someone who thrives on drama and conflict.  He blinked rapidly - his gorgeous eyes and those perfect eyelashes no man has a right to possess – Morse code for _oh_ _god I want to fuck you stupid right now_.  As if that made it all okay.

Cait says I’m constantly apologizing for Taran’s behavior, but that’s not it at all.  I’m apologizing for being so stupid and co-dependent as to put up with him.

I was out the door, the bell going _jingle-jangle_ , and making my way to the curb before I even knew I was going to do it.  I sort of yelled to Cait over my shoulder but then I was on the sidewalk and waving my arms in a seizure-like fashion to flag down my beautiful acquaintance.

“Ben!” I yelled, not considering that it might frighten him, my attention-demanding manner.  He reached the other side of the street and paused, looking over at me.  For a few long moments I wondered if he was going to recognize me and then a very slight smile changed the shape of his lovely mouth.

Another one of Taran’s features which is thoroughly unfair is his perfect Cupid’s Bow mouth.  His lips make me want to reach for the collagen – but I don’t do that high-maintenance shit – and it occurs to me that Ben has sort of the same shape to his mouth, only more subtle, more fitting with what I believe a man should possess.  With Taran, it’s kind of like his DNA couldn’t decide which sex he should be so it gave him equal attributes: masculine height and a broad frame, but also the lush beauty usually granted to women.  He made me feel confused sometimes, and I resented the reaction even as I lusted after him, because just like everyone else I’m a sucker for a pretty face…and a long lean body with a pert ass. 

Ben confuses me too, but for other reasons.  I catch up to him, trying not to sound out of breath.

“Hi!  Wow, kinda weird just running into you like this.”

He nods, just the smallest of movements.

“Hello.”

“How are you?”

“I am well,” he replies, and there’s something distant about his tone.  My fantasies are crumbling around the edges when I hear Cait’s voice behind me.

“Dude, what – oh, uh –“

“Ben, this is my friend Cait Murphy.  She’s a writer.”

He stares at her, expressionless.  I have turned to face them both and she eyes him with a curious scrutiny.  “H’llo,” she says, keeping her hands in the pockets of her hoodie.

He says _hello_ again like he did the first time.

“Ben is, uh, well gee, I guess I don’t know what you do.”  I laugh, embarrassed.  “We never got to that part.”

He looks like he has to think about what to say.  “I’m visiting, and studying.”

“Oh, at one of the universities?”

He nods.  This is so weird, because he’s being his usual self – that I know of – and yet there’s something opaque in his manner, like he’s hiding something.

“Hey so, we should get together sometime for coffee, you know?  Would you like my phone number?”

Ben puts his long fingers to his lips and his sea-glass eyes are a probe, as if he’s trying to figure out if my statement is a euphemism for something else.  And sure, that sort of thing usually is, but I’m not like that; I don’t keep anyone else on a string as a safety fuck or emotional indulgence.  Women are notorious for that sort of thing, but I had decided not to be underhanded for once in my life.

“Dude, why is he acting like he’s retarded?” Cait whispers in my ear.

“Stop!” I hiss.

“Yes please,” he says, and that tiny smile has appeared once more.

I tore off part of a receipt in my bag and wrote out my full name and cell number and added my email address – _oberlina@othepayne.com_ – then handed him the piece of paper.

“There, that’s all my contact info.  It was nice to see you again.”

He frowned at it, and I felt stupid.

“My email address is a pun, my last name is Payne.”

Ben looked up again, eyebrows raised.  I shrugged and I continued to feel stupid.  I don’t think he means to make me feel that way, it’s just my usual paranoia.  Then my phone chimed with a text and he turned away.

“I’m going home now,” he said in farewell, but it was likely just a declarative statement instead.

I pulled out my phone, it was Taran.

_@theStrand  come now_

I put my hand on Cait’s shoulder.  “C’mon, let’s go have a drink with the Brat Prince.” 

“Where is he?”

“The only pub he ever wants to go to, of course.  He’s buying, so we’ll take advantage of his generosity.”

She rolls her eyes.  “Oh yeah, big fucking spender, a couple rounds down the pub.  That cheap bastard can kiss my fat white ass.” 

“Just don’t degenerate to fisticuffs while we’re there, okay?”

She laughs.  “Nobody talks like you, y’know.  You are totally archaic.”

“My dad talks like me, that’s where I got it from!”

We walked up to The Strand, as we were only about six blocks away.  The owner was one of Taran’s first supporters, he owns several paintings and two of them hang in the pub, though Taran never sees them because he always sits outside.  As we come up on the corner where the pub is located I see him at his usual table at the end of the smoking section, a pitcher of Newcastle and several pint glasses on the table.  He was lighting a cigarette and as he looked up I was amused to see his expression seem to literally fall right off his face, to view Cait.  They can’t stand one another and I acknowledge a certain sadistic pleasure in bringing her around.  He grunts at us, exhaling with a loud sigh.

“You didn’t order me a drink?” I exclaim, hands on my hips.  Cait sits down and pours herself a beer.

“I dunno wot you drink!” came the protesting reply.  What a crock of shite, as he would say.  If an Englishman is going to remember _anything_ about you, your choice of bevvy would be at the top of the list.  Alcohol is an essential component in understanding the Brit mindset, you see.

“Well let me refresh your memory, my chappie,” I say, and my voice is frostbitten bitchery.  “Salty Dog with Stoli.  Go fetch.”

“Yes milady,” he replies, taking another drag and standing up.  His voice is also especially icy.  He’s likely afraid that if we get into it here we’re going to end up on Gawker or some other gossip site.

Cait takes one of his cigarettes and lights up.  I give her a look of surprise.

“Just to piss him off,” she says, smirking.  “Dude, are those really your pet names?  Gross!”

I roll my eyes.  “Judge not lest ye be judged, Petunia.”

She flips me off with a smile then leans forward.  “So that guy Ben, what’s his deal?  Why are you wanting to hang out with someone who should be on the short bus?” 

“Fuck off!  He’s not like that, he’s…I dunno, just quirky, I think.  Maybe he’s an aspie.”

“Every anti-social asshole gets labeled as an aspie these days, I call bullshit on that.”

“Well he’s interesting to me.  And I still want to know what he and Taran were doing at the bank.”

“Oooh a mystery!” she squeals, sounding like Velma Dinkley.

Taran returns with my drink along with two shots of Scotch.

“Dinnae ye want a wee dram o’th’cratur, lass?” he asks Cait with an awful Scottish accent.  We giggle at him; I’m embarrassed to admit it’s one of the things I find most attractive about Taran, his propensity for bad accents.

“Aye, I’ll fuckin’ drink ta that, laddie!”

They do manage to get along okay as long as there’s plenty of booze.  _Artists._

 

For reasons mostly unfathomable, Taran is well-behaved for several days, causing me to wonder what’s wrong.  I consider several different scenarios but none of them truly upset me, and it’s depressing to consider that I would be just as relieved if he were breaking up with me as not. 

Except my readership would likely tank, and dilettante or not, I rather like being Famous on the Internet.  But I’m not sure how to talk to him…and here’s the thing: we don’t talk _to_ one another.  Taran talks _at_ me when he’s of a mind to, otherwise he just wants to be fed and housed and fucked when he deems it necessary.  The downside of life with an artist is that they don’t normally have a lot of energy for sex: they get obsessed with work and push until they drop, then they want nourishment and a long nap.  I tend to think the best sex Taran has ever had is with one of his paintings: an orgy of brushstrokes, endorphins firing at the command of nicotine and creative satisfaction.  When he’s finished a painting - or a significant portion of one – he glows, he smiles, the world is his.  And I like to see that in him, as that’s another thing which turns me on: artistic mastery.

I bring him tea and biccies and he grunts and mumbles, his head wreathed in smoke as he mixes colors and squints at the canvas, a dab here, a stroke there.  He sounds hopelessly pedantic when he talks about his process, but to witness it, I am fascinated.  It’s bred in me: I can remember sitting at my mom’s feet as she worked her loom, loving to see all the different shades of yarn combine into an actual creation.

I wonder about Ben and his glacial remove, his alien attraction, but the down-and-dirty pull of my Brat Prince is right in my face and I succumb, making him his favorite meals: Sunday roast with scalloped potatoes, fresh leeks and pearl onions.  Strata with pepperoni and sun-dried tomatoes.  Bangers and mash even, though I’d like to make him sleep out on the balcony when he eats sausage, it’s like the Crimean War in his intestines. 

I woo him with my siren song of culinary seduction, and he gives me the megawatt grin.  But even so I’m hedging my bets against the next disaster.

 

 

As an only child the only sibling-like relationships I have are specifically sought and cultivated.  Like my first cousin Patience (yes, my mother’s older sister was a total granola queen), the middle child in her family who ditched her own clan and bonded with me instead.  I count on her to tell me the truth…which she did about Taran in less than five minutes after meeting him.

“He’s a user, Obe.”

“He doesn’t do drugs, Patty.”

“That’s not what I mean!”  We were in the restroom whispering to one another like we were eleven and twelve, not thirty-three and thirty-four.  “People are just there to give him what he wants and when they don’t then they don’t exist to him.”

So I consider bringing her along to my _kaffeeklatch_ , if it’s ever going to happen.  Because she could figure Ben out, I think.  My perception is all skewed because I find him attractive and mysterious.  But Patty has issues of her own, she fears her husband of ten years is cheating on her.

“He just doesn’t pay attention to me anymore.  Not like he used to.”

“He doesn’t find you sexually attractive?”

“We still have sex so, no, not that.  It’s like I’m just not interesting anymore.  He doesn’t look at me just to look at me.  God, it’s not like I’m a withered crone!”

“No of course not!”  Patience lucked out in that she did inherit all the attractiveness of the females of our line, and she invests in all the typical upkeep that I’m just too stubborn and lazy to do.  I’m the only girl in the family who ended up looking like her father.  “He must be having some kind of weird testosterone swing or something.  Male menopause.”

She sighs.  “Well, he **is** forty-six –“

“See?  Total midlife crisis twitchiness.   But what makes you think he’s actually fucking around and not just _thinking_ about it?”

“He’s so distracted, like he can’t stop thinking about whatever he’s _done_ , not just fantasized.”

And I get that, really I do.  Although truly, how could we conclusively state these sorts of observations other than by intuition, and we put so much significance into it when it’s really just emotional telegraphing.  You might as well just read your daily horoscope and believe every word.  And yet, we know - by a complex system of body language and expression and nuances of speech – when something’s not right.

“I don’t know what to do, other than the obvious of just having it out with him.”

“Well, you can cybersnoop on him.”

“Ugh, I have a friend who did that and I was appalled.”

“Yeah, it’s an ugly way of gathering intel.”  I’m sitting at my desk and my gaze rests upon a photograph of me and my mom and dad, one of the few which exists.  We were in Costa Rica, I was 15.  The fifteen-year-old me looks considerably happier even though I remember that I was irked I had to spend an entire summer away from my friends just so Dad could observe the natives of the rainforest or whatever he was doing.  That was back when Mom thought we should at least attempt to be a normal family, like that was ever going to happen.

“You don’t think Taran would ever do that?”

“What: cheat or cybersnoop?”

“The former.  Didn’t you say he was a technophobe?”

I snicker; it’s true: other than email and obsessively checking the counter on his website for visitors, Taran has little use for the online world.  It amuses me to think about how cranky he will be in twenty years time when print is finally dead as a doornail except for the vintage factor.

“Taran’s too selfish to cheat, cutting into his creation time to fuck around would be a violation of all he holds sacred.  The world is awaiting his next grand statement, you know, and if he’s wasting time with sexual intrigue he’s depriving humanity of his genius.  If he decided he wanted to fuck someone else, he’d just pack his shit and say it was over.  But she’d have to know how to cook, and have you ever seen a trophy fuck who also possesses culinary skills?”

Patience is laughing hysterically, and I smile.  I don’t consider myself funny so it’s always flattering when people tell me how hilarious I am, or I can make them laugh like Patience is laughing right now.  The sound trails off except for a string of giggles.

“Oh god Obe, my mascara’s running now, you brat!”

“Yes Patty, I did that just to fuck up your makeup.” 

“Ahhhh, I gotta go, I have a nail appointment.  Love you, honey.”

“Love you too, Patty-cake.”

I end the call and stare at the wallpaper of my iPhone for a bit, it’s a photo of one of my mom’s pieces. What is wrong with me?  It’s not like my life _entirely_ sucks, and while I could probably figure out why I pick the wrong guys all the time it’s not like every relationship is do-or-die.  I have a safety net most women do not: I don’t need a man to survive or even to be relevant.  I can do all that on my own.  I allowed Taran to become my platform, so that’s my own fault.  Why have I embedded him so deeply into my life if he makes me ambivalent and miserable?

It scares me to think I deliberately – if possibly unconsciously – positioned myself as a victim, a martyr.  To consider I might actually be masochistic.

I can rescue myself, thank you very fucking much.  And yet, the hindbrain, the part which is the kneejerk product of lifetime societal conditioning (as my dad has lectured me about forever), craves an external source of rescue.

Fuck that.  _Fuck that noise!_

But I don’t want it any less.

So I write a blog entry about ‘fessing up to this fact, except I make Taran the hero and I know his groupies will both sigh at my words and curse my existence.  But my readership needs my validation because they think I know something they don’t.

Oh what a crock of _shite_ that is.

 

 

We’re sitting in Prittzi’s Gelatoria and outside the world is soggy, the rain a steady percussive accompaniment.  Ben’s long fingers linger on a small white cup, considering his espresso with the same clinical attention he seems to give everything he ingests.

“It’s not sweet,” he says.  Again, I mean, since he’s said that before. 

I had ordered a cup of raspberry gelato with dark chocolate chips and my tongue is enraptured by the contrast between the two states of matter and their flavors.  I hold it out to him but he looks confused, blinking rapidly.  His eyes are so fascinating. 

“This is sweet,” I say, extending the spoon, “well, sort of.  It’s tart too.”

It’s quiet inside the shop, which is weird.  Usually Mr. Prittzi plays opera, but other than that detail there’s nothing particularly Italian in regards to the ambience.  It’s more like an old-fashioned soda fountain.  I have the feeling Ben would not know what that is (Taran knew just from seeing _American Graffiti_ ).  It’s quiet except for the rain, the world a gray wash beyond the plate-glass window, which is cold.  I shiver, even though the temperature of the shop is fine.  Ben leans forward and takes a taste.  I watch his face, his eyes widening, his lips pursing.  He stares at the ceiling and I imagine he’s really thinking about the taste, the texture, the temperature.  Analyzing the experience entire.  I can’t think of the last time I did that with _anything_.

“It’s strange,” he says, finally.  “It is not just one flavor.”

“No.  That’s why I like it, it’s complex.”

He nods, with that tiny smile.

I smile, but I’m smiling at our ceiling.  Taran is snoring and it’s raining.

 

 

My mom and I attend the new textiles exhibit at the MOCA (she has two pieces featured, the same two which tend to be trotted out every time there’s an collection of Significant American Artists) and as we do, we stop to visit Taran’s painting in the Contemporary Gallery, grouped with other artists from the UK.  This one is _Pompeii_ _, AD 79_.  And I am struck – as I always am – by the sense of stillness, even as the work displays a chaotic panic in its depiction of the disaster.  I see the painting before I see the room.  Had it been the other way around, I would have noticed Ben sitting on the bench in front of it immediately.  He looks almost too big for that perch even as he sits perfectly motionless and stares at the canvas.

“So you are a fan of Taran’s work,” I say to him.  “I wasn’t sure.”

He doesn’t smile this time, his expression is ponderous.  “It interests me.”

I turn to introduce my mother, but she has wandered away.  She does that - museum, library, bookstore, grocery store, department store – I’ve lost my mother in all of them over the years.  She becomes distracted by the presence of many objects in one place.  I turn back and come to sit beside him on the bench.

“Do you like this one?” I ask, gesturing to the painting.  “Taran painted it years before we met, it’s probably his most well-known piece.”

He tilts his head, his sea-glass eyes flash as he blinks, seeming to consider a response.  Or perhaps look at the painting in a way which will assist him in doing so.

“I wonder,” he finally said, “what happened to them.”

“Are you studying history?”

“Yes.”

I fumble for something interesting to say, not wishing to merely interrogate him.  He has a hauteur which makes me nervous, although I assume it’s not on purpose.  All of this reminds me of another distant figure from my life.

I tend to tell people I’ve never been in love, but that’s not true.  Although it could honestly be characterized as hero worship, I have been – and still am – in love with someone I can’t have.  Someone twenty years older and hopelessly out of my league.

It’s an artist, of course.  I think that’s why I let Taran charm me, I wanted a painter of my own.  I met Kenneth through my mother, they were featured in several shows together, he lives in a cramped apartment uptown.  He is a fairly successful and respected abstractionist, but he likes to say he is miserly like his father’s family, all Scots. His paintings are swirling kinetic masses of bright colors, I own two of them and one hangs in a place of honor over my desk, an ongoing source of irritation to my Brat Prince.  Kenneth has a seemingly endless succession of girlfriends, all around my age, who stare daggers at me despite his introduction of me as his “niece-by-choice,” because he flirts with me shamelessly.  He knows I’m infatuated with him and it amuses him.  He believes himself terribly unattractive – and truthfully he isn’t particularly striking, being short, balding and a bit dumpy – but he possesses a charisma many would kill for.  And it is entirely natural to him, it’s not a bluff.  When he’s in a room, all eyes turn to him eventually.

“So whose heart are you breaking now, Obe, hmm?” he would ask me as we drank tea and he would spike his liberally with the kind of whisky only meant to be sipped.  Although he lives modestly he has expensive tastes.

“You’re the heartbreaker, sir,” I would tease and then hide my mouth behind my fist so he couldn’t see my smirk.  But he would smirk in kind and toast me with his mug.

Kenneth is perfect to me, of course, because he is unobtainable.  I know – from a more clinical standpoint – that he is fussy, cranky, snobbish and has a mania for order which borders on the pathological.  I could never live with him and measure up because I am too used to having things my own way.  I couldn’t subsume my identity as those women who do live with him, his tribe of handmaidens.  But a part of me wanted to and the passing years have contained periods of deep wallowing longing to worship him, sighing over every kindness he shows me.  He has such beautiful eyes, also brown, but darker than Taran’s.  And his smile when he greets me melts my heart every time.

Sitting there in the gallery next to Ben reminds me of being frozen, suspended in my unrequited obsession.  I had the same sense of not being good enough for the source of my interest.

“I thought I might major in history,” I say, feeling like I’m babbling, though my speech is normal-paced, “but I ended up with a dual major in English and Anthropology.  Didn’t get any of my mom’s talent, but my dad – well, I thought I might follow in his footsteps.”

Ben’s gaze is impassive.  I clear my throat.

“Because he’s a cultural anthropologist, I mean.  Frederick Payne, he –“

He nods, that tiny movement again.  “Yes, I’ve read –“

“Oh okay, I didn’t want to assume,” I interject.

My phone chimes, my mom is texting me.

_@gift shop  can we go now?_

Damnit, why does this keep happening?!

“Uh, I gotta..look, please call or email me sometime, okay?  I’d love to know what you’re studying and all, if you want to talk about it, that is.”

He gives me a smile, and it seems genuine.  He doesn’t say anything and I eventually have to leave, but it could be he thinks it’s not necessary, that his smile says it all. 

I’ve found it’s dangerous to interpret people’s smiles, because one usually imbues them with more than they actually contain.

 

 

I’m waiting for Cait to come over for a night of watching _X-Files_ DVDs and she’s bringing a draft of her latest novel for me to take a red pen to; she says her editor, while a nice lady, has the intelligence of wet cardboard.  I’m in the midst of whipping up a batch of my way-too-fattening popcorn (the secret is mixing loads of parmesan cheese into the butter and then topping it with a bit of seasoned salt and Frank’s Red Hot).  My phone starts chirping at me, I think there’s something nicely whimsical about the crickets ringtone.

“Hey,” I say when I see it’s her.

“Hey…uh, listen –“

“Aw dude, don’t make me break out the Nutella!”

“You bought Nutella?!”

“I always do.  So what’s your lame excuse then?”

“The gig was cancelled.  Apparently the guy who was supposed to pay them ran off with the money.”

“College kids, whatcha gonna do?”

“Yeah they’ve got to practice for their future embezzling, I guess.  Anyway –“

“You’re really gonna bail on me?!”

“Because the gig was cancelled, Sammy got behind some really good ‘schrooms and now he wants to –“

“ – fuck your brains out.  Hormonal sellout!”

“So go get yours; where is the Brat Prince anyway?”

I sigh as I mix the popcorn with my hands, putting Cait on speaker.  “Dude, I don’t even know.”

“Well there’s another thing wrong: if you’re feeding him and putting a roof over his head, supporting his vices, then at the very least you need a leash you can reel him back in with.”

I sigh again, because it’s not a point I care to argue with, nor do I have the energy.  I feel deflated in that moment, then I hear Sammy in the background playing his banjo and warbling _Petuuuunia!_

“Oh good lord, the fluffy-headed cactus is in heat, better run along and subdue him.”

“Fuck you too; meet me at the CC tomorrow and I’ll give you the ms, okay?”

“Yeah okay.”

The word _leash_ is still in my brain after I disconnect, so I dial Taran.  He answers fairly quickly, I don’t hear voices in the background so he’s not down the pub.

“Wot is it, Obe?”  He’s got me on speaker.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m painting!  Why?”

I turn meek, reflexive guilt at unfounded suspicions.  “I just wondered when you would be home.”

He huffs, disgusted at my intrusion no doubt.  “I dunno, when I’m finished.”

“Okay, get back to it then.”

“Haven’t actually stopped.”

“Bye.”

“Hey,” he calls and I pause.

“What?”

I hear him slurp some tea.  “You fancy me.”

I giggle, not meaning to, but it’s a rather absurd non-sequitur.

“What?!”

“You made latkes for me tonight.  You said you would only do that when you decided you liked me.”

I’m still giggling as I take a handful of popcorn.  “When did I say that?”

“I dunno, probably the first time we fucked.”

“Oh yeah, like I’m gonna say _that_?  You’d only use it against me anyway.”

Taran snorts.  “That’s a helluva thing to say!”

“It’s true!  Well you’d better come home before I eat what’s left.”

“Saucy bitch,” he purrs and I hang up on him.

It doesn’t depress me that this is our idea of foreplay, we’re both incredibly sarcastic - and I’d just laugh if some guy attempted to woo me in the way Sammy does to Cait - but rather that there’s no real meaning to it, underneath the words.  Not for me.

I’m inspired, I sit down at my desk with the bowl of popcorn to write about how ennui is a First World problem but how does one halt the entropy of a relationship that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself because it was so poorly defined to begin with?  I don’t specify who was having this problem, just perhaps something everyone could relate to (although if you can’t it’s implicit I despise you outright).  I can’t pretend it’s any of my friends or relatives having this problem because they all read my blog and would wring my neck if I appropriated them for anything.  No fame whores in my family…not even me, come to think of it.  I mean, it’s one thing to be famous (or infamous) on the Internet, but quite another to desire widespread attention as a life requirement.

I think about calling Patty but it would be my luck that this would be the one night she’s having sex too.  I don’t care what kind of mood Taran is in when he returns, he’s getting fucked even if I have to knock him out and tie him up.

This is what entropy does to you, folks.  Desperation is never attractive.

 

 

Most of the time when Taran works at home I have to endure a soundtrack of jazz.  Not the classics – I know from the classics, alright?  My dad taught me well.  But really weird time signatures, sometimes atonal, sometimes minimalist, stuff I don’t even know what the hell it is.  Me. I’m happy to do the housework to _Paul’s Boutique_ , and usually when I’m writing I’m listening to dinosaur music…the same stuff Patience and I listened to in my dorm room at college while we got stoned and discussed how we weren’t going to rely on men to make us happy.

Oh what a crock of –

So I’ve got the earbuds in trying to drown out the weirdness with a dose of _Hemispheres_ , bobbing my head to “La Villa Strangiato” – the only time I could possibly get away with it because Taran hates Rush –

(Cait was floored.  “Dude, who could possibly hate Rush?  I’ll tell ya who: someone with no soul.”)

\- and the pounding ceases and I don’t notice for a moment but then sort of flinch and look behind me in case Taran is reading over my shoulder again while I am floating away on glistening waves of Alex Lifeson guitar, but no, he’s not there.  I take out my earbuds and realize he’s on the phone with someone.

“Yeah yeah, it’s great.  Oh so you saw the article?  How was the snap, d’ya think?  Yeah?  I didn’t like it, but they said it was the best of the lot.”

The poster child for whatever movement he has deemed himself a part of, Taran will suffer bad reviews before a bad photo.  But honestly, even in an unflattering photo he still looks sexy; it’s just not fair.

“Oh do you?  Yeah it’s nice.  How long?  ‘Bout a year now, I think.  Oh, well…uh, I’m so busy is all, I’ve become a hermit!”

I lean my elbows on my desk and smirk.  _Well, isn’t this interesting?_   Taran usually acts oblivious to other women coming onto him until they either give up or do something obvious, in which case he has Alan pry them off and lead them away.  So I’m amused to hear him have to slither out of an attempted snare on his own.  I’m sitting so still I feel like I’m holding my breath.  He probably knows I’m listening.

“Yeah we’re a right team, I s’pose.  Gives her something to write about and all, she’s really brill.  Her parents – well, if you read it then you know ‘bout them.  No, she hadn’t heard of me when we met.  Daughter of an artist, you’d think she’d keep up, but no, not really.”

I hear him light a cigarette, and I consider that I’m not insulted by his comments.  I think he’s trying to express – to whomever it is – that he knew he could trust me because I wasn’t a starfucker.

A sigh.  “Yes, I’m still a dirty smoker.”  A laugh.  “Well fuck you too, self-righteous bitch!”

I lean back in the chair and the accompanying _creak_ seems to bring him back to the moment.

“Got to dash, but it was nice to have a chat.  Yeah sure, you should come to the next show.  Right then, bye.”

Silence for several minutes, then I hear his tread down the hallway.

“D’ya ‘member Marlene?”

Well of course I do, the woman he was dating before me.  They were already history when we met, and I came to realize over time it was for entirely understandable reasons.  I didn’t demonize her, nor did he, but I couldn’t help a smirk to wonder if she was feeling a bit of regret.  Taran hadn’t been as famous _then_ as he was _now_.

And that was partly thanks to me.

“So how is she?  Does she still work for that –“

“Animal rescue foundation?  Yeah.”

“So…”

“Just calling to check up, I think.  Saw all the press ‘bout the show, reads your blog.”

“Regret; ‘cause you’re hot shit now.”

He’s rummaging in the cupboards, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.  “Wot happened to all me booze?”

“The party happened.  You need to stock up again.”

He grunts, then moves to the freezer and pulls out my bottle of Stoli Vanilla.  “Is this sweet?”

“No, not really.”

He starts to pour some but I stop him.  I take two fingers for myself, mixing it with some Vanilla Coke in a drink I like to take credit for called a Vanilla Cock – named due to a typo on Cait’s part in an email which so amused me I had to create something it its honor.  I then poured him three fingers and added a splash of tonic.  Taran sipped it and looked pensive.  I sipped my drink and observed him being pensive.

“What’s wrong?”

He shrugged.  “I dunno.  Guess I wonder wot she saw in me.  You and I make sense, we’re both creative people.  But she’s in a world I could never understand.”

Marlene has money too, of course, I think it’s a requirement for him.

“You mean she wanted you to be clean and cultured and polite.”

“Exactly,” he shot back, and then we both laughed.

“I’ll tell you what she saw in you: you were the bad boy she wanted to fix, that’s your appeal.  All the women who cream themselves over your centerfold in _Artforum_ are thinking the same thing: _Oooh what a sexy rebel!_   You just ooze unwashed bratty charisma.”

“You haven’t tried to fix me,” Taran observes, taking a larger swallow.  “This isn’t too bad, really.”

“That’s why I cut it with tonic, so you wouldn’t bitch about it.”

“I thought you said your drink was with grapefruit juice.”

“Not with _flavored_ vodka, ugh!  This is just for Vanilla Coke.”

“Now that is bloody disgusting!”

“Fuck off!  I haven’t tried to fix you because assholes can’t be fixed.”

He smirks at me through the smoke, crushes his cigarette in the ashtray on the table – do you know how hard it is to find ashtrays these days?  I had to go to a cigar store way uptown just to get a few once I gave up on forcing Taran to go out on the balcony every time he wanted to smoke.  I take another sip and will the alcohol to anesthetize me. 

“You always tell me the truth, Obe.”  He raises his glass in a toast and I do the same.

I have to admit, though, that he’s the only man I’ve ever known who doesn’t mind that kind of thing.  But he doesn’t pull any punches with me – or any woman for that matter – which could definitely offend the sensibilities of a lesser being.  Much like the implied audience in “The Last Time I Saw Richard:”

_You like roses, and kisses_

_and pretty men to tell you all those pretty lies._

_Pretty lies…_

_When you gonna realize they’re only pretty lies?_

_Only pretty lies…_

_Just pretty lies._

…and the way Joni’s voice cracks on the last iteration of “lies,” that says it all right there.  The illusion crumbles because it is too fragile a structure to sustain the weight of reality.

 

 

My mom is over for lunch and shopping, she sinks into the folds of my maroon velvet couch as if unfamiliar with the more plebian uses of furniture.  Like she’s afraid she might be eaten alive.  The air is now full of her expensive perfume, cutting through the usual amalgam of Dunhill smoke, linseed oil, and whatever I’ve been cooking (today it’s chicken curry in the crock pot).  I’m sure she categorizes my lifestyle as _boho_ and therefore never disapproves.

“Do you think lovers should tell each other the truth?” I ask her.  I’m facing away, giving my email queue a last-minute scan before we head out.

“Oh good heavens no!” she exclaims, her voice taking on a laughing tone.  “Now if you’re going to get _married_ , that’s the time to consider honesty.  But not before.”

That word fills me with cold dread.  I’ve never really desired it, except for a clichéd fantasy of marrying Kenneth and being his invaluable partner in managing his life so he can devote himself to Art.

(I know; trust me, it makes me gag to think of it now too.)

And then I thought I might - with Tom, my dead ex-boyfriend - but I was saved from actually having to go through with it.

“I saw Kenneth the other day,” she said.  Looking at the painting over my desk must have jogged her memory.

“Where?”

“He was having dinner with Toni, I was dropping off the latest contract.”

Kenneth and my mother share an agent.

“He said: ‘What is Darling Oberlina up to?  Is she still with that disastrous man?”

I laugh loudly.  It’s not the first time Kenneth has referred to Taran as such, but it never gets old, that joke.

“And I said, ‘Aren’t you on Girlfriend Number Thirty now?’  He thought that was funny too.”

I’m still tittering.  “Yeah he would, that old womanizer.”

“He does get around, doesn’t he?  I always expect each girlfriend will be younger than the last.”

“I think that is the trend.”

“I don’t know what you see in him, Obe.  He’s much too smarmy.”

“I like that he’s charming, and charismatic.  And he’s a genius.”

“You could say the same of Taran.”

I turn and give her an arch look.  “You _could_ , but you don’t have to live with him.”

 

 

I’ve taken to haunting the MOCA, hoping I’ll run into Ben again.  I have only the vaguest of notions on how to find him.  If I knew his last name that would be one thing, but I’ve allowed him too much mystery to bring him to ground.  Cait and I are wandering around the Contemporary Gallery, within sight of Taran’s painting but not close enough that it looks like we’re loitering.  Mid-week, there’s no one around, the skylight overhead reveals a washed-out altitude, faded to some un-shade of nothing.

“I wish I knew how to find him,” I muttered, looking across the space to the entrance, which remains devoid of other people, taunting me with its quiet.

“Who, the aspie guy?”

“No, Jacques Fucking Cousteau.”

She does a softshoe in her Chucks; today Cait is dressed like an extra in an emo band video: white jeans and a black oversized t-shirt emblazoned with the logo for Sammy’s band, gray shrug with a retro cut and jet beading.  Who wears white jeans any more anyway?

“Undah da seeeeea,” she sings quietly, trying to amuse me, “darlink it’s bettah, down where it’s wettah, take it from meeeee!”

I giggle and give her an affectionate shove, the nut. 

“He’s dead, nitwit!”

“Aspie boy?”

“No, Cousteau!”

“Oh,” she looks crestfallen, her arms dangling at her sides.  “Really?  Bummer!”

We circle back to the painting, which is really well-placed - now that I think about it – in the center of the room.  I glance at the title card, and then at Cait.

“You know, Taran deserves to be famous and all, but I **made** him famous.  Because talent needs promotion to embed itself in the zeitgeist.”

“I’ll fuckin’ drink to that!  Hey, you wanna make me famous too?”

I sigh; we’ve had this discussion before.  “We can’t do anything with Phaedra, they hold the copyright!”

Cait’s body sags, and I feel bad even though it wasn’t my intention to remind her of that unpleasant fact.

“I know.  I should just undercut the collective bullshit and create a whole new character.”

I grab her shoulders and give her a little shake.  “Yes!  That’s what I’ve been telling you!  Start a new exclusive online serial or something, or find someone talented who’s willing to work on the cheap and do a comic, and I will promote the hell out of you!”

Cait brightened for a moment, thinking of it, then the air went out of her.  “I’m so tired,” she said softly.

I blow a breath through my nose and look at the painting again.  It seemed to be looming over me, threatening me somehow.  “Yeah me too, of this relationship.”  She gave me a confused look and I pointed my chin at it.

“Oh **that**.  Well shit, dude, what have I been telling you since you met?  Since _before_ you met him?  You don’t have to suffer anything you _don’t_ want to, so there must be something you _do_ want.”

And I didn’t know what; it was driving me crazy.  I thought interacting with Ben might make things more clear but…well you can see how that is going, can’t you?

We ambled over to the café where – and you wouldn’t think so, necessarily – they have a great caprese salad.  If only sex could be as good as the collision of flavors in that dish…but that was my own fault too.  I was surely well-off enough to find good sex if I truly wanted it.  Hell, even Cait had found it, and she was marginal at best, which is not a reflection on her intrinsic value, which I consider to be higher than mine.  But she required it, to hear her tell it.  What I require is something I can’t define, apparently.

“If you didn’t _know_ Taran, would you be attracted to him?” 

She shrugged.  “He’s a pretty English boy, they tend to be popular and all.  So yeah, I guess.”

“I feel almost detached from my desire for him,” I noted.

“That’s because he won’t ever let you touch him unless it’s on his terms.”  She held up a hand and began counting off on her fingers.  “No fucking before noon, no PDAs, no cuddling after sex or while watching TV, no ‘I love you’s, no –“

And it hit me, really hard, at that moment.  The mozzarella, tomato and basil turned to dirt in my mouth.  I thought I was too weird to want an _I love you_ , but maybe…could be?  I chewed, swallowed, took a drink of water, then sat there staring at nothing and she could tell I wasn’t listening to her anymore.

“What?” she asked, looking at me with genuine concern.  Cait _does_ care about me, I know this, she’s just not always good at showing it.

“Do I love him?”  I was asking myself, but it was a rhetorical question, perhaps.

“See I don’t think you do,” she declared, sawing away at her tower of ingredients once more.  “And furthermore, you don’t _have_ to love anybody.  Except yourself.  And how many of us do, really?  We consider it bad form and all.  But then somebody comes along who can convince us that the whole _we’ve met the enemy and it is us_ thing is self-defeating, and so we lighten the fuck up and have some fun.”

“So you and Sammy have fun?”

“Fuck yes!”

:”But even my dad says society – and therefore the participants in it – is defined by relationships.  People need –“

“They don’t _need_ love.  They need positive reinforcement, but love is an artificial construct, didn’t he write that in one of his books?  There’s rules to keep people in line, and stories to keep their illusions going in order that they’ll follow the rules.”

“Yeah, something like that.”  It amuses me that Cait actually remembered something from one of my dad’s books and my appetite returns.

“And like he would know!  He can’t even have a relationship with you and your mom, fer chrissakes.”

“It’s just an incredibly circumscribed one,” I quipped, and she smirked.  After another bite I lean across the table.  “Dude, did you _seriously_ not know Cousteau was dead?”

Cait mock-flailed, knife and fork in hand.  “I don’t commit a bunch of random shit to memory like you, okay?  I can barely remember my _own_ life, much less anyone else’s!  Besides, that’s why Cthulu created Wikipedia!”

“Of course,” I said, sitting back and focusing on my lunch once more.  “It all makes sense now.  Can you tell the Flying Spaghetti Monster to show me a sign, please?”

She blinked several times and spoke around the food in her mouth.  “Bitch, don’t mock my belief system!  I’m telling your dad!”

“Yeah good luck with that one, sister.”

We’re both trying not to choke on our food, there’s far too much hilarity when we eat together.

 

 

Yes, my life _is_ a journey from one meal to the next, and this surprises you?  Didn’t I already tell you people love me for my cooking?  Or at the very least hold me in high regard. 

I’m making my mom a nice WASP-y kind of dinner: salmon on cedar plank with herbed wild rice and asparagus.  She feels virtuous eating fish…me, I just like it.  Taran doesn’t like asparagus so he gets creamed leeks.  He’s always so well-behaved for my mom.  He showers and shaves and wears a button-down shirt and sips wine and they talk about art for hours.  I know he’s not doing it to impress me, or even her.  He genuinely likes her and knew of her from Art History classes, he was fully impressed to learn we were related.  Come to think of it, maybe _he’s_ the starfucker.

But most importantly, he doesn’t smoke around her.  This has the strange effect of both offending me and pleasing me.  Apparently I don’t rate that kind of consideration.  During dinner they discuss sculpture and she tells him she’s lately become interested in Hans Bellmer, a German surrealist.  He created articulated dolls – what they call ball-jointed dolls – which he used in his artwork in lieu of live subjects.  And he was wholly enthralled with her running commentary.  I knew something about Bellmer too, the Nazis considered him a degenerate, and his work post-WWII was highly sexual, most often involving young girls.  Taran would be titillated to learn that part of it, but of course my mom is too mannered to mention the latter part of Bellmer’s career.  I could see what she was doing: setting me up for a more salacious event after her departure, because I wouldn’t be able to resist telling him the rest of the story.

Now that’s _love_ , isn’t it?  Who else would care enough to assist me with the realization of what she thought I wanted.  It wasn’t difficult to surmise the distance between Taran and I: we sat across the table, with my mom in the middle.  I kept busy in the kitchen before dinner and they sat on the couch talking current events and gossiping about artists they both knew.  But I ached for Taran from my remove, half-listening to their conversation and half-swooning to view him: the shirt he wore was black, and unbuttoned by three, exposing his creamy tawny skin and the sparse dark hair on his breastbone.  His hair was carefully brushed and hung to his shoulders, framing the pleasing symmetry of his face just so.  His speech was measured and cultured – he really could sound posh when he wanted to.  He came from an equally well-off family who basically disowned him when he decided to be an artist rather than a barrister.  Of late they’ve reconsidered, apparently.

And yet, it’s not like Taran had an agenda which I could discern, just trading on his most obvious attributes, perhaps out of regard for who we were, because he could.

I could even smell him beyond the odors of the meal and my careful selection of his personal fragrance did work the way it was supposed to.  I had decided, after he moved in with me, that he definitely needed to smell better, somehow. 

One day at a high-end men’s counter, I collared a sales associate.

“My boyfriend is a fairly heavy smoker.  He needs something which smells good on him despite his bad habit.”

The guy had dark blue eyes which I’m sure didn’t hurt when it came to his job, and the kind of blond hair usually referred to as _sandy_.

“Are you trying to get him to quit?”

“Have you ever smoked?”

The guy shook his head.

“Well, you can’t make someone quit until they’re ready.  So…”  I held my hands out, like, _can you help me or what?_

He pivoted to face the row of bottles behind him, considered them all for a moment before selecting one and spraying a test strip.  He waved it under my nose and I smelled leather and citrus, and something warm underneath which I assumed was musk.

“It’s potent, all right,” I opined.  “But not obnoxious.”

“It clings fairly well, so it should stand up to the stench.”

“It’s not that it smells _bad_ on him, it’s just that I don’t want it to be all people smell.”

I got out my wallet.  After he swiped my card and bagged up a boxed bottle he pursed his lips as if pondering what to say as I affixed my signature to the touchscreen.

“Don’t give up on him, okay?  This is only a stopgap measure.”

I nodded as he handed me the bag.  But to be honest, I think the fragrance smells _better_ when transformed by Taran’s personal alchemy.  Like it doesn’t come into its own until it’s fighting for dominance with the patina of Dunhill smoke which defines his airspace.

I had whipped up some dark chocolate mousse, but my mother begged off.  She’d only eaten half her dinner as it was, she wasn’t one for indulgence.  She waved to Taran out on the balcony and I walked her down to the lobby to wait on the hired car.

“Your dad is going to call you next week, I think.  He misses you.”

I wanted to laugh, derisively, but that would hurt her feelings, and I love her.  And because I love her I care enough to indulge her illusions.

“Yeah?  That’s a nice surprise.”

We smile, kiss and hug, she climbs into the car and I look up and down the block, maybe looking for some other surprise, but there is none.  So I go back upstairs to attempt seduction with chocolate mousse and an obscene art history lecture.  _Thanks Mom!_

 

 

This hotel room reminds me of the room where Dave Bowman finds himself at the end of _2001: A Space Odyssey_ – is it inside the Monolith?  You know, that whole surreal sterile French Provincial nightmare where he goes to bed and dies and then, suddenly, he’s the Starchild.  This room is soulless, and Ben and I really aren’t making any headway in changing that vibe.

“I’m glad we found each other,” and I run my finger down his arm.  The sea glass gaze is taking inventory of me, I think.  I feel like I know what he sees: rounded face, apple cheeks, almond-shaped amber eyes, mousey hair which succeeds despite itself because I have a flattering cut (and an expensive stylist to provide it).  I’m really sort of a rounded-type of person altogether, but I always thought it suit me; I don’t generally have a desire to be anything other than me…partly out of sheer orneriness, I’m sure.

But it’s odd, he doesn’t smell like anything.  If he wasn’t right in front of me I wouldn’t think he was there, really.  He’s still not speaking, just staring.  Then he leans forward and puts a hand into my hair, pulls my face close.

“For the sake of whatever may be, in future, or not, know that I would have chosen you.”

I feel myself blinking, then I kiss him.  His lips are a bit rough and dry and cool.  There’s no warmth coming off of him but because he is so mysterious I am thrilled to finally touch him, kiss him.  But it doesn’t seem to tell me anything about him.  When you kiss someone, you get a sense of who they are, even if they’re fake. 

(And I think about the first time Taran kissed me: it was the night we met and we drank for a few hours and talked – he talked about himself until I told him who my mom was and then suddenly he wanted to know all about me and I was jaded and snarky and trying not to be openly contemptuous and yet he was so pretty and making my pussy twitch – and I thought to myself when he kissed me that he was going to be big because he knew, right down to his core, how to seduce people.)

That’s the kind of information you can learn from how someone kisses.

With Ben it’s like he studying me and I get that it may be an intrinsic element of his personality - detachment as a character trait – even with my arousal I’m somewhat disturbed. 

Who’s the ghost: him or me?

One of us is not there but I can’t tell who.

And then we’re on the bed, those anonymous sheets…maybe not, who knows when they were last washed.  Who knows whose DNA we’re wallowing in.  But he examines me, he traces my bones and his fingers are smooth and his touch light as he does so.  I shiver – from the touch and temperature of the room – and again I feel there’s no warmth to be gained here, even as I willingly allow whatever will be.  I want to take him, be the aggressor.  I’m not afraid to do whatever I need to in order to get what I want.

(I said to Taran, “Are we going to shag then?”  He laughed and then he replied, “Only if you’ll make me brekkie in the morning.”  And it charmed me, that he seemed to want something beyond the obvious.)

I open my legs, I reach for his hip, to bring him closer.  He is an architect’s dream of long lines and angles.  He is a work of art and like a statue come to life except I would not use that word.  Maybe attained sentience, that’s a better term.  And it doesn’t seem to me the emotions are deeply embedded waiting to be brought forth.  It’s more like he’s waiting for me to implant them inside him.

I can smell myself, and my arousal.  But he’s still giving off nothing.

I take his cock – long and thin like the rest of him – and rub it against my labia.

I think about the last time I hugged Kenneth, I can’t even remember how it felt, though I know my embrace was affectionate.  Maybe I was protecting myself, so I didn’t have to feel it too deeply.  But my heart was pounding, as it always does, to see him. 

I’m looking into Ben’s eyes, his gaze is serious with intent, but what is the intent?

“You’re so emblematic of your kind,” he whispers.

Most women would have stopped, would have sat up and said _what the fuck does that mean?_   But I appreciate he has a different way of communicating.

(I felt vulnerable on top, but our difference in height made it easier to fuck Taran that way.  He gave me the megawatt grin and said, “Don’t break me now, right?  First time out of the gate and all.”)

I take Ben inside me and the world seems to disappear into white light, like a dissolve edit.

Am I protecting myself again?  So that I can’t remember why I did this?

  

 

“I think I’m falling in love with someone else,” I tell Patience.

“Oh my god, do you think that’s what happened to Ted?”

I pause.  That was so not the response I was expecting.

“Patty-cake, you would know better than me.”

She sighs.  “Hey, so…I scheduled a date night for us next Thursday, can you come and stay with the kids?  My regular sitter isn’t available that night.”

“Yeah sure, but you gotta come upstate with me next month to visit Tom’s grave, okay?”

She sounds startled.  “Oh!  Yeah okay, just remember it’s probably going to snow up there.  You shouldn’t put out any flowers, they’ll just freeze.”

“No I won’t.” 

“You know your mom thought Tom wasn’t good enough for you.”

I chuckled, although it struck me that mocking the dead wasn’t very nice.  “Yeah, she said he was plebian and didn’t understand me and was beneath me not because he was a maintenance worker, but because he had no desire to appreciate my soul.”

“Wow, that’s florid even for her!”

“Yeah, she was pretty desperate by that point.”

“So wait, who are you in love with?”

I snickered again, Patience does that delayed-reaction thing oh so well.

“ _Maybe_.  The guy I met at the party, the one who’d met Taran that day and then somehow ended up in my apartment.”

“So why are you in love with him?”

“Because he’s an enigma, because I’m frustrated and restless.”

I heard her snort disbelievingly.  “And you call that love?  Obe c’mon, you’re smarter than that!  You’re just projecting your frustration onto him.  Taran may be a user but at least he seems to need you.”

I suppose we do all wonder if we’re ever really needed.  If we’re essential to the existence of another.  I know I am privileged to have people in my life who genuinely care for me and make me feel special.  I’m fortunate to have such a good relationship with my mother when so many people are at odds with their parents and other relatives.  And thus my discontent does seem to be about something beyond Taran.

“I can’t stop thinking about this guy, it’s scaring me.  Remember how long it took me to stop obsessing over Kenneth?”

“Yeah right!   You never stopped, you just found a distraction.”

And if that’s all Taran truly is then maybe it would be better to end it already.  But I just don’t know.

 

 

It’s an ordinary day, under muted skies, and I’m walking past the Berendt Gallery – where Taran is currently featured, his name big-as-life painted upon the windows – and then I am literally running into Ben with a _thump_.

“Are you ready to come with me?” he asks, that same serious inquiry both verbal and visual.

And then it seems as though there’s an intrusion, I’m looking over at the wide windows which proclaim **TARAN BRAST** and view my reflection: I am small and plain and thoroughly confused.

Hold the phone…I don’t _go_ with anybody.  I’m Oberlina Titania Payne, and ridiculous name and all I choose my own destinations.

(“How in the world did you survive school with a name like that?” Taran asked me.  It was the first time I allowed him to smoke in my apartment – after sex – and so I suppose I set the entire tone for our relationship with that one act: giving into his demands.

“I went to a very progressive private school where everyone had a weird name, weird parents, and it was implied that you didn’t ridicule people for being different, because being different was your birthright.  Besides, nobody thought ‘Obe’ was a strange nickname and I’m sure by the time we all graduated my _actua_ l name was a distant memory.”)

_Why do I always seem to choose men who tower over me?_

“Go where?” I ask and he says nothing.  It is a proof of faith, not an inquiry.

(“I rather like it, that you have parents brave enough to disregard the outcome of such semiotic consequences.”

“If you wanted to date my mom you should have just said so, she’s always willing to entertain the odd acolyte here and there.” 

Taran looked shocked for a moment, laughing himself into a coughing fit.  And then _he_ fucked _me_ , with great vigor.)

The sounds of the day swirl around us and when Ben starts talking he’s underneath all those sounds but intrusive enough that I can hear it, wholly focused on him as I am.

“I was sent to look for him, not for you, but then I found you were the greater interest, but only to me, and they told me to focus, but my focus had been distorted and yet I would not say that, would only say it had shifted, onto equal enthrall.”

There’s something meant for me to comprehend, but the meaning is slipping, dripping between the words and onto the sidewalk.  Out of the corner of my eye I see **TARAN BRAST: WHEN THE WORLD SHIFTS** and I turn back to respond in that moment – that very second – and there is only the air stirred by passing cars and pedestrians and a distinct void where once a precipice had been revealed.

 

 

Taran’s sister – the sylph-like Miranda – makes an appearance at my abode.  She’s a dancer and so I’m not surprised to find them lazing on my balcony smoking and drinking like the expat artsy farts they are.  She’s equally gorgeous and tall and as the baby of the family Taran is very protective of her, riding herd on the various males who have attempted to seduce her.  The problem is, I don’t think either one of them will ever find anyone as fascinating as they seem to find themselves. 

Miranda is one of those women who is very easy to despise for her beauty and poise, but in her case it comes with a hauteur which is the _true_ reason to consider her loathsome.

“Obe!” Taran yells as soon as he spots me making my way towards the kitchen, arms full of grocery bags.  “We’re going to Violet’s, c’mon!”

I’d love to say _no thank you_ , but in these instances I’m almost spitefully possessive (plus, Violet’s is one of my favorite restaurants, very old-world Ukraine).  If I didn’t come it would only give Miranda more ammunition against me, she uses the word _blogger_ with the same emphasis she would give to _leper_.  But I do have to acknowledge her talent, I’ve seen her dance.  But her attitude is what is holding her back, so I hear from my contacts in the ballet world.  Maybe she needs, like, the male version of me; and I wonder who that could be.

“Yeah okay, give me fifteen minutes!” I yell back, double-timing it on putting the groceries away.  And so another evening of listening to the Brast siblings bitch about their rivals, watching Miranda eat mere microbes of food, and drink vodka like she owns stock in Stoli.

 

 

For the offspring of a recipient of such a bohemian upbringing, Patience’s kids are entirely normal.  I know Ted’s got nothing to do with it, although he’s rather normal too.

Madison is 10 – going on 45 – and Noah is 8.  They’re equally sandy-haired and bright-eyed, each have ambitions and interests but are primarily concerned with friends, with fitting in.  As my dad would point out, our hindbrain hardwiring perceives being cast out as the greatest taboo of all.  They like me, but they don’t think I’m cool, which is okay.  I don’t possess the need for anybody to think I’m cool, though what I _do_ need is rather an ambiguous proposition at this point.

“Obe,” Madison asks me as we’re clearing the remains of dinner from the dining table and kitchen counters (something suitably junk-worthy which I can get away with when their mom is not around), “do you think Taran could come to my school and talk about art?”

I try not to smirk directly at her.  _Oh lord, I will never hear the end of this._   “I’m sure he’d love to, sweets, but I don’t know if the principal would like that, given the kind of stuff he paints.”

“No she’s the one who asked me!  She saw me at Assembly and was all, ‘Doesn’t your mom know Taran Brast?’ and I’m like, ‘My cousin is his girlfriend’ and she asked me to ask you.”

“Your principal is a fan, eh?”

“Yeah, she says he’s a big deal.”

“He is now,” I mutter in sarcastic retort and then follow it up with, “Let me ask him, babe, okay?  He’d have to figure out how to talk to kids, I think.”

She giggles, knowing how awkward Taran is around anyone under the age of 18.  I stopped bringing him to family gatherings after witnessing him glowering in a corner at Noah’s birthday party as my relatives and friends viewed him with curiosity like I’d brought a panther to a petting zoo.

 

 

That day I had opened the mail like I always do – not bothering to look at the envelopes – and there was a check made out to Taran for six grand.  I didn’t recognize the name on the document but the notation read _Ashgebat, 1948_.  I felt my eyes go wide and my blood pressure rise but on the other hand I was surprised.  Four figures?  Why was he accepting such a low-end offer for his work?  _Fuck you_ money, maybe?

And so was it me he was going to tell off?

I put the check back in its envelope and left it on the nightstand beneath a half-empty pack of Dunhills, which sat next to an ashtray, some loose change and a lighter which had belonged to his father.  Taran was always ready to proclaim he wasn’t sentimental but holding its chilly weight in my hand, I knew differently.  He carried around cheap lighters he wasn’t afraid to lose, but kept a memento of his lost relationship in a safe place.

Loading the dishwasher my mind kept flashing on the check, and I was experiencing such conflicted reactions, anger at him for various reasons: selling himself cheap, hoarding money while claiming near-poverty to my face, a complete lack of trust.  It wasn’t the first time I’d fucked someone I couldn’t trust but I didn’t want to _live_ with someone I couldn’t trust.  I needed to confront him but I just wasn’t sure how.  We’d argued enough times that I knew he would just walk away from a conversation he didn’t want to have.

My phone rang and I grabbed at it on the counter, not looking at the caller ID.

“Obe?  Are you watching TV right now?”

“Cait?”

“Yeah.  Turn on CNN, quick!”

“What?”  I reached over to the mini TV Patty kept on her desk across from the dining area.  I didn’t know which channel that was in her neighborhood so I kept flipping until I found it and then froze.

“You got it?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s that guy…Ben, right?”

My mouth was agape, then I was swallowing rapidly.  I couldn’t process what I was seeing, even as it was right there in front of me, in surreal televised actuality.  The caption at the bottom of the screen read **Apocalyptic Cult Protests Art Exhibit**.  Below that, _Artist Taran Brast denounced as “false prophet.”_

“Obe?!”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

The man I thought I’d wanted so badly was being interviewed, talking about the end of the world and how the group – the cult he was apparently a member of – had believed that Taran was revealing secrets about the event in his paintings, but now the truth had been revealed.  But worse – the one thing which was a figurative slap in the face – was his assertion that this group believed they were aliens.  And Taran was going to reveal to how to conquer the human race.  Only now, their plan was foiled.

Ben had bought one of his paintings and subjected it some kind of wacko tinfoil hat conspiracy theoretical analysis and it didn’t hold up.  So they wanted to expose Taran as a fraud.

And now I knew why they had been at the bank at the same time.

 

 

I stumbled my way through some halfassed mumbling with Cait - watching the scene: a crowd in front of the Berendt Gallery with signs, chanting, as Ben spoke louder than I’d ever heard him speak to the reporter, who was attempting to look serious but a smirk kept forming on her lips – and then I told her I had to go.  The kids were upstairs doing whatever they normally did that time of night, so I let them be and hit the speed dial for my lying sack of shit boyfriend.

Alan answered, and I wasn’t really surprised.

“Obe, we’ve got a bit of a situation at the mo –“

“Yes I know, and I’m only going to add injury to insult if you don’t put him on the phone now!”

“Insult?  Oberlina darling, this is a coup!  Taran will be a household name by tomorrow, you can’t _buy_ publicity this good!”

“Speaking of _buying_ , do you know he’s selling paintings behind your collective backs?  He’ll be a household name alright, but a cut-rate one if he keeps selling his work for half of what he should be getting.”

“Wot are you on about, dear?  Look, here he is, hold the line.”

I heard their voices and then Taran said, “Have you seen the news, then?” 

“You lied to me, Taran, and if I wasn’t two suburbs away I’d wring your lying Limey neck.”

“Obe, wot –“

“You **do** know who Ben is, but you pretended not to because you didn’t want either of us to know you were selling off your paintings yourself.  Your agent is going to be so pissed, chappie.  And you know what, you totally deserve this clusterfuck for being such a sneaky bastard.  I hope you become a punch line on late night talk shows –“

“For fuck’s sake, Obe, climb off it!  Look, I’m sorry, but it was something I had to do.  When you come home I’ll explain –“

“No!  No you get out, do you hear me?!  Pack your shit and get the hell out of MY apartment, and when I get home you had better not be there or I will fuck you up!”

“Obe listen to yourself!  You’re not about to get violent –“

“Oh no?  I wouldn’t risk it if I were you, motherfucker!”

I disconnected the call and ignored all his attempts to get me back on the line.

 

 

The bastard was tenacious: over the next half hour my phone chirped and chimed with calls and texts and I was ready to turn it off but then a glance at the caller ID revealed my mom. 

“Oberlina,” she scolded.  “Taran is frantic to talk to you, are you ignoring his calls?!”

“Did he tell you _why_ I would be doing that?”

“Yes honey, he explained the whole thing to me.  You should give him a chance too.”

“No I’m done with him!  He **lied** to me!” 

“Obe, it’s not as if he had an affair!  When you hear the reason why –“

“Mom, I’m sorry, but I cannot talk about this right now.”

I hung up on her.  I’ve never hung up on my mother, ever.  I think that scared me more than what had actually happened, and just made me even angrier that Taran had put my life asunder.  I called Cait.

“In your opinion, what’s worse: lying about money or lying about sex?”

“Oh money, definitely.  _Everybody_ lies about sex.”

“See I knew I was pissed for good reason!”

“So wow, what a nutjob that Ben guy is, huh?  Scary because you couldn’t even tell.”

_Oh right, that._

“Uh…yeah.  Definitely bizarre.”

“I mean, not in the grand scheme of things, necessarily, but for _you_ , y’know?”

What a blog entry this would be.  Except that I was too completely mortified to ever write about it.

“Yeah, okay, I’ll call you later.”

“Yeah you gotta tell me how the Brat Prince is reacting to this.  Did Alan pay that guy or what?!”

I mumbled something noncommittal and ended the call.  Taran had tried to call me five more times.

 

 

By the time Patience and Ted had arrived home I was mostly calm.  But so pissed.  Ready to throw the mother of all diva-esque tantrums.  I asked if they’d heard the news and received blank stares in response.  I pulled Patience into the den and broke it down.  She was by turns amused, confused and aghast.

“You know what really pissed me off?” I asked, but ready to answer so it was fairly rhetorical.  “The fact that I’m so fucking stupid as to fall for some total delusional cultist weirdo who only paid attention to me to get to my fucking boyfriend!  How pathetic am I?!”

Oh, it hurt, it hurt so bad.  Because I’m not stupid, or deluded, or emotionally needy.  Except, apparently, yes I am.  I was still furious at Taran for lying to me, but damn if I could have bitchslapped myself into next week I would have done so.  Repeatedly.  And how did I get that way?  By allowing my bratty boyfriend to tear me down?  I don’t tolerate that shit except, apparently, yes I do.

“Oh honey, how could you have known?  You’re not psychic!”

“Dude, there are _always_ signs, but people don’t pay attention!  I’m better than that, I **do** pay attention!  But I wanted so badly to think that maybe someone could…fuck, I don’t know, rescue me, I guess.  Goddamn I’ve turned into one of those women.  The ones I can’t fucking stand!”

“Obe, you are incredibly smart, I would never dispute that.  But you’re only human.”

And I started cracking up because, yeah, that was totally the perfect answer to all of this ridiculous psychodrama.  Human.  My cousin looked at me like I’d gone crazy and I hugged her.

“Patty-cake to the rescue, babe.  Can I spend the night?  I can’t face him right now.”

 

 

But I had to, of course, at some point.  Taran called me and texted me all night long, and I fast-forwarded through all of the voicemail messages except one.

_Obe please, just let me explain.  And if you’re done with me then okay, but, I didn’t lie to you to hurt you.  I may be a shit but you’re the only one who understands me, ‘cept for Miranda.  I know you know that.  Please._

And there was something in his voice so achingly raw and honest it was like…the first time I made him come.  He made this ridiculous expression before blowing his load – like we all do – but the sound which came out of him, it was from somewhere he couldn’t disguise.  We hide behind our personas and our civilized veneers (my father has taught me well) but there are some things which emerge from that swamp deep inside, they shamble out into the light, blinking for long moments before they do whatever they will.  They are subterranean and shadowy and they escape when we’re not looking.

And I knew, I knew that I had made Taran feel something he had no control over.  No matter what else he said or did, I had him.  I guess I never wanted to admit it to myself, but he had given himself to me as much as he was capable of, even if the way in which he did it was never good enough for me.

 

 

As soon as the elevator doors opened, I could smell him.  I came around the corner and Taran was sitting there, in the hallway outside the apartment, and he looked awful, like he hadn’t slept.

You know that moment when you finally achieve your revenge and it’s supposed to feel good, like a complete vindication and justice served and all that crap?  It doesn’t really, the damage is already done and you can’t fix it like that.  Sometimes you can’t feel anything at all.

“An art teacher once told me, ‘One always prizes the object on which one has lavished the greatest amount of effort.’” I said, as I walked up to him.  “And I did.  You are so damn lucky that I considered you the most precious thing I’d ever found.  But now you might as well be a bunch of broken glass in the bottom of my trashcan.”

“Oberlina.”  His voice was hoarse.  “Please.”

“So what was worth completely destroying my trust for?”  I leaned up against the opposite wall, arms crossed, my face set in an expression of angry neutrality.

“It was Miranda, she was in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“ _Expensive_ trouble.  All my money goes for rent on the loft and supplies and such and so the only way I could help her was to sell some of my paintings off quick.  Yeah I knew that guy, I sold one of them to him –“

“So that’s why you were both at the bank that day?”

“ - yeah but, I couldn’t say anything, Alan and Geoffrey would have murdered me!”

Well hell, if you think about it, Ben lied to me too.  By omission, which is the politically correct form of lying, of course.

“And he just sort of glommed onto me, then, came along to the party.”

“He was stalking you.”

“Yeah I s’pose.” 

“I kept running into him after that.  I guess he was stalking me too.”

“Christ Obe, it’s a miracle they didn’t snatch you, or something.  D’ya know they were planning some sort of weird event, like one of those suicide pacts?”

“I had no idea,” I said, and then we were even, Taran and I.

  

 

It was cold, the day Patience drove me up to Tom’s grave, threatening to snow but the wind was like a knife.  Not that I would really know how that feels, but there was a sharp edge to the way it blew across our faces, trying to get beneath our clothes. 

Cait came with us, she said she needed to see some rural scenery for inspiration.  The two of us kept up a running sardonic commentary about my failed engagement until about ten miles past the last gas station/rest stop before the exit, Patty blurted out, “Seriously now, stop it!  The guy is dead, can’t you say anything nice about him?”

“But we’re not ragging on him,” I protested.  “If anything, we’re talking about how lousy I am with relationships.”

“Yeah, you do tend to bumble,” Cait quipped, drumming her fingers on the armrest, nicotine-deprived and maybe a little carsick.

“It’s just…I’m really sensitive about the subject right now,” Patience continued.  “Ted and I are in counseling, and if that ends up in your blog, I swear to God –“

“Dude I would **never**!” I exclaimed.

We all stopped talking and listened to some talk show on NPR.  When we got to the cemetery I took the opportunity to appreciate the landscape.  Tom was buried beside his mother and father in a plot where – if you looked off to the north – you could see the mountains in the distance, great hulking shapes against the sky.  It was tranquil, and cemeteries are meant to be, I’m aware, but it was the peace of nature, rather than death, which made me feel that way.

Patty and Cait were walking along the outer path, just walking along, not talking.  Cait didn’t inspire too much affection in my family, although my mother appreciated her talents and therefore condoned our friendship, mostly.  The path was lined with trees which were bare at the moment, yet their presence was plain enough, even for being stark and spooky.  I heard their footsteps on the gravel, the wind coming up from the south, the caw of crows further away.  I heard the voice of my mother in my head as I looked at Tom’s gravestone: just his name, and the dates of his birth and death, and one single oak leaf carved at the top…

_Your father and I, we understand each other.  We may not like each other all that much anymore, but there’s something to be said for someone who understands who you are, why you think certain things, do certain things.  To hold onto that knowledge even if you don’t always agree.  It’s why we’re fine with the way things are…it’s other people who think it’s strange, but we understand it, we’re the only ones who can._

 

 

Kenneth’s latest girlfriend was the kind of female I’d want to look like, if I could: petite and lithe and naturally pretty.  She had beautiful thick near-black hair and olive skin and amber eyes almost as beautiful as Taran’s.  She gave off an air of approachable exotica.

I was always poisonously, profoundly jealous of Kenneth’s handmaidens.

“Hi, uh -“

“I’m Oberlina; we met at Charlie’s party last month.”

“Oh right, yeah…uh, Kenneth is working.”

“I really need to talk to him, there’s a family emergency.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you guys were related.”

Whatever.  She let me in and I sat on the purposely-gauche 70s-print couch in the only room which was at least normal-sized.  Kenneth lived in a building which was originally a single-family dwelling then chopped up into apartments and his was a weird cluster of tiny rooms and long hallways.  Said hallways were lined with paintings: his own, and those of his friends, and paintings he had bartered for from others before they became famous.  After about ten minutes she came out and nodded her head towards his studio.  He’d chosen it because the outer wall is almost entirely windowed, I think it used to be a formal parlor or something.

Those kind eyes were filled with concern and I hated playing the sympathy card but I needed him.  He hugged me and spoke softly into my hair.

“Wot’s wrong, Oberlina?  Is it your mum?”

“No, uh…I really need to talk to you, about Taran.”

Kenneth held me at arm’s length then, with a wry smirk.  “Paints disasters, then ends up right in the middle of one.  Haven’t decided yet whether he’s too clever or not clever enough.”

“Your opinion of his talent aside, do you think he’s worth it?  My time and effort?”

I sat down on the posing couch he used sometimes, a black velvet rococo object.  He had moved over to the table where he kept his supplies and began cleaning brushes as he talked to me.

“Artists are inherently selfish, Obe; you should know, you were raised by one.  It’s only worth it if what you want is for them to succeed.  You can’t be in it for anything you want.  But he’s better than that _gardener_ person you thought you were going to marry.”

“Tom worked for the Parks Department. He was a landscape engineer.”

Kenneth made a dismissive gesture and smoothed his thinning hair across the top of his head.

“He was as dull as dishwater my darling, and though it’s bad form to speak ill of the dead it would have been a living death for _you_ to have married him!”

“So who **was** good enough for me?  You?”

We both sort of froze when I said that.  And we blushed at the same time.  Kenneth is a retiring sort of person; even though he’s charismatic in a room full of people he prefers hiding from all of them instead.

“We shouldn’t talk ‘bout that.  Not until some day when I’m decidedly less dangerous than I am now, deaf and blind and my teeth residing in a glass.”

“No I am not waiting until you’re in a fucking home, Kenneth!  I’m having a crisis here and I _need_ you to tell me the truth.”

He sighed, seating himself on a wooden stool and regarding the paint-splattered floor.  He always dressed the same: black shirt, blue jeans, and sometimes it made him too look austere and aging.  The light through the window was unforgiving, but I loved every single inch of him, I always had and I always will.

“Of course I adored you, ever and always, sweet girl.  And the way you looked at me, from the very first, you made me feel positively heroic.  That’s very addictive to a validation-craving creature such as myself.  I imagine your disastrous man feels the same way ‘bout the way you regard him.  I certainly would have made away with you when you were done with school but your mum wouldn’t have allowed it, and she’s a terrifying woman.”

“Wait, _my_ mom? Who hates to even send back her food if it’s not right?”

“You just don’t know.  With you she is all affection and kindness and that’s as it should be, she’s a perfect mum.  But with men – especially any men of her circle who were interested in you during your collegiate years, and there were more than a few – it was like approaching the Berlin Wall pre- _glasnost_ : machine guns and barbed wire and landmines.  And I was a wretched coward.  Still am, really, but I make up for it in other ways.”

“She loves Taran.”

“Well of course she does, he’s handsome and talented and _au courant_ , entirely worthy of your affections.  I’m just a lecherous old windbag whom she still believes might take advantage of you someday and make you into my nursemaid.”

“I can’t believe she thinks you’re so awful.  _Why_ does she think that?”

“I think it’s because I remind her too much of ol’Fred.”

My father looms so large in my life for not even being there.

“D’ya ‘member, when you were, oh, 20, I think?  21, maybe?  You were going to a cotillion one night, in that lovely dress from 1932 or some such.”

I nodded, shyly smiling.  “And I just happened to invite you to dinner that night.”

“And then you cornered me in the living room and asked me to waltz with you even though I told you I couldn’t dance a step, and you said you would lead.  And you were my sweet girl, how could I say no?  And so in that moment, as we went ‘round in circles, everything you felt for me, I felt it in turn.  I wouldn’t have been able to say no to anything in that moment.”

“And then my mom –“

“Then your mum caught us and oh – she still gives me A Look to this day.  _Get away from my child, you evil interloper_.”

“She really thought _you_ were trying to seduce _me_?”

“Well I dunno what she _thought_ , save that she wasn’t having it!”

We laughed, then after the sound faded and we were staring at the floor again, I realized he didn’t want to talk about the past any longer.

“Is he worth it?”

Kenneth looked up and made an exasperated sound.  “You think he’s brill, or at least that’s how you write ‘bout him.”

“You read my blog?”

He grinned.  “Everyone reads your blog, dear.  D’ya love him?”

“Despite my best efforts.”

“Well it’s settled then.  So go fetch him and set him on the right path again.  He needs to do something useful with his new-found fame because it won’t last unless he produces something memorable.” 

“I won’t tell anyone we had this conversation.”

“’Preciate it, sweet girl.  Imagine the scandal which would arise from that!”

I hugged him tightly; given his confession I felt I should also take advantage of the situation.  He murmured _speak soon_ into my hair and then I left, smiling as wide as my face could manage.

 

 

It all started when Taran called me on his birthday.  I could hear talking in the background, I figured a bunch of his “friends” had gathered at the loft and good for them…I was so glad not to have crowds of people in my apartment, people I didn’t even know, or want to know, for that matter.

My apartment still smelled like him, but it didn’t feel like him anymore. 

“Obe are we really over?” he asked, obviously drunk and morose.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Why ask when you clearly don’t want to accept the answer?”

“But who’re ya gonna find as interesting as me, eh?”

“I know plenty –“

“Who are _available_.”

I sighed and he let out with a triumphant _ha!_

“Go fuck yourself, and have a unhappy birthday,” I said, with as much bitchiness as possible and from his tone in reply I could tell it gave him a boner.

“Oh don’t think I didn’t know ‘bout Kenneth…why else would you hang that ghastly painting right over your desk?”

“You are not fit to be mentioned in the same breath; and you were a poor fucking substitute, I might add.”

“Well –“ he paused, and I could hear him take a drink of something.  “I can always get better at fucking.”

I just lost it, I fell over on the couch laughing.

Taran’s right: there’s no one as interesting for me as him, though there’s plenty of nicer, sane and sensible individuals.  He is a disastrous man, but I can’t look away.

 

 

I never gave Taran an answer, I guess you could say.

He wanted to know if it was over; I made him move back to his loft but he would show up, ringing the bell, and I’d buzz him in.  But I insisted we date, which meant movies and dining out and trips to the museum.  During one such outing a young girl came up to us, I figured she was about 15.  She whispered to Taran, who signed her catalog with a grimace.  She then turned to me.

“Are you Oberlina?” she asked.

I nodded, and she held out the catalog for me to sign as well, but I shook my head.

“Please?  I love your blog!”

Oh Jesus Fucking Christ.  I signed it: a total scrawl, not my usual signature, and tried to smile at her.

“Are you an artist?” Taran asked her quietly.  She nodded.  He shrugged.

“Well, whatever you do, do it yourself, right?  Don’t lose whoever you are.”

She scampered away, beaming, and we left before anyone else could recognize him, us.  His likeness had been all over the news during the week or so the story about the cult was considered interesting, and now Taran found himself being talked to in random places: the dry cleaners, the bodega around the corner from his loft.  People even came to The Strand now because they knew it was his watering hole, but luckily the owner rode herd on the autograph hounds and paparazzi.

“Wow, that was…serious,” I said.

“And here you thought I was just a pretty boy,” he replied, winding a scarf around his neck as we stepped out of the building.

We went to get a drink, which gave him an excuse to try and win me over again, ordering me what I wanted without asking.  But I was resisting the appeal of such gestures.

Taran took a long swallow of Newcastle and extracted a cigarette out of his pack, tapping it on the table.  Minutes went by and watching him fidget – he was trying to cut down in some misguided attempt to impress me – made me lose my composure.

“Just smoke already, please!” I snapped.

He blinked, looking surprised, then looked around for his lighter.  I must have said it all on purpose, because I had one in my pocket, I held it out, with flame alight.  He lit up and then took it out of my hand, exhaling through his nose as he examined it.

“This is a Dunhill Rollalite, where did you get it?!”

“On eBay, it was going to be your birthday present before you pissed me off.”

“It’s gorgeous,” he murmured, looking at it from every angle.  “Twenty-carat?”

“Eighteen.”

“Must have cost you a fortune.”

“I figured it would be the only thing you’d really like.”

Taran smiled at me through the smoke drifting between us.

“Am I still worth it?”

“I don’t know.” 

I had turned my head, trying to look grumpy but out of the corner of my eye I could see him looking at the lighter with the kind of sexually-charged avarice women tend to exhibit when receiving jewelry as gifts.  And I had to admit I liked that, knowing he could be purchased.  I had the upper hand now, but I wondered if I could be as cruel as I had perceived him to be.  Perceived, because there was no way to really know if my anger had been justified.  I think I’m just angry, full-stop, and he finds it arousing.

A match made in Purgatory, if I believed in such a thing.

He set it down on the table in front of me.  “Well, here’s hoping you decide I am.”

I pushed it towards him.  “You might as well keep it now.  Consider it your consolation prize.”

“I can’t be consoled, Obe, not unless you take me back.”

He was giving me The Look, the one where it seemed his soul was fully occupying the windows of its abode.  His eyes always hooked me, and I tried to steel myself against the onslaught.

“Oberlina.”

Goddamn it, I can’t stand how he makes my name – my ridiculous name – sound like poetry, like some rare and exotic flower, or a type of gemstone…something beautiful.

“It’s not going to work, I’ll just get angry at you again.” 

Taran trimmed the ash on his cigarette and sat back, The Look still trying to get underneath my armor.  I tried to let myself be distracted by all the noise and activity around us, but it felt like we were inside a bubble.

“Obe, you’ve been pissed off at me since the night we met.  But you feel other things too, so I don’t mind it.  Why d’ya think I was such a brat?”

“Because you are?”

“Because I was fighting it, and so were you!  But this is **it** , this is us, and nobody else is as interesting to me as you are.  I know you have a hard time accepting that, but don’t you think it’s worth it?  You must have, otherwise you wouldn’t have worked so hard to help me succeed.  And I wanted to make you proud of me.”

“No, you wanted to make _my mom_ proud of you.”

“Well that too, but no, really I swear – I’ve spent all this time trying to impress you.  You’re the only one who really understands wot I am, and respects it.”

I feel like we’re speaking two different languages at the same time, and yet I know Taran’s right.  Underneath all the things which annoyed me were the hints, the clues, the signs which he displayed to construct what he thought should be the edifice of our relationship, covering the walls in fascinating imagery.  And in turn, I believed in him, and expressed that belief to others.

“Why don’t you just say the thing that normal people say, okay?  Because you never have.  So how the fuck was I supposed to know?”

“Obe please, you’re brilliant.  I don’t believe for one minute you couldn’t possibly figure out how I feel ‘bout you.  It would have been an insult to your intelligence to use those empty words.”

“Well you know what?  Sometimes I prefer the plainly-stated empty words!  I want you to make the fucking effort to use them.  I’m only human, don’t treat me like some kind of science experiment!”

And as I say this, I’m tempted to laugh because…well…that’s what I was doing all along, right?

Taran stared at me for a few moments, then extinguished his cigarette and took my hands in his, leaning close enough to kiss. 

“Oberlina Titania Payne, I love you.  Please take me back because otherwise I have no idea wot I’m doing.  You give me focus and purpose and I love you and even Miranda says I need to woo you again and stop moping about.  I will grovel right here, right now, if you like, on this dirty floor and proclaim my love forever.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous.” 

“Obe for fuck’s sake, don’t mock me when I’m trying to be serious!  I’m doing wot you asked!  Should I walk out into traffic instead?  Because that’s wot I feel like doing right now; you’re crucifying me, so either stop or just let me fucking end it!”

I couldn’t breathe, and I finally looked into The Look and saw the truth of it: Taran was miserable, and hurting, and afraid. 

“If…Ben managed to –“

“Don’t even say it!  Been having nightmares ‘bout that ever since it happened.”

“So you would have been sad.”

“In-fucking-consolable.  And wot ‘bout you, if they’d done the same to me?”

“They wouldn’t have, you were the prophet.”

“No, they got into their heads I was a _false_ prophet.  Who knows wot they had in mind for me?!”

“But –“ 

“Answer the question.”

My heart was thumping, my palms sweating.  “Yeah, I would have been devastated; to lose somebody like that again.”

Taran squeezed my hands, his voice came out hushed.  “Oh.  Right.  Is that why you’re so angry, then?”

I looked up at him, shrugging in embarrassment.  “It’s way more complicated than that.”

He smiled, that megawatt grin which felt like the sun emerging.  “Of course it is, you’re a complex sort of girl.”

 

 

 

Oh my goodness, it’s just like in all those fake videos…a metal table, and strange machinery.  Except that Ben isn’t using any of it on me, only his own body, to explore the subtleties of my emotions.

“Why do you think you’re an alien?” I ask him.

His gaze is blank but then a hint of amusement shapes his features.  “Why do you think you’re human?”

I blink, confused.  “Because I’ve never known anything else.”

His expression changes again, to something more smug.  “And more’s the pity.”

My father says that one of the impulses of humanity is the need to feel special, which leads to magical thinking.  If we can invest ourselves with a special, even strange, ability then we lend ourselves purpose and set ourselves apart even as we are one of many.  Faced with such an obvious example of his theory, I am annoyed.

“Humans can be _special_ , distinctive.  You don’t have to lie to yourself like this.”

“I know what I am.  Do you?”

And he shows me that he does, he pulls me to him and is invasive, intrusive…knowing what his form is capable of in the arousal of mine.  Those thin fingers circle my clit and I arch upwards, crying out, a sudden shock. 

“Isn’t this what you wanted, a _distinctive_ experience?”

It’s not sex we truly seek when we turn to others, away from the one we have chosen.  It’s the undiscovered country of one’s self, the adventure we’ve denied ourselves in the boundaries of the life we lead.  I’m not really knowing him at all, but _myself_.

A sequence follows in which I’m tempted to be silly, absurd: to say he’s probing me.  _I’m carrying an alien-human hybrid!_ the tabloid headline would scream.  But the impregnation is knowledge, not cells, not the seeds of DNA roulette.

And it’s not that race to fulfillment, not the sweaty grunting of the primalistic grind.  It’s more like he studies me as he’s inside me.  He moves like a glacier across the sea, like a cloud in the sky, all of deep geological time in the form and in the movement.  And so I don’t know how long it goes on, but then I turn my head and I see Taran on another table across the room: also nude and so very beautiful.  I gasp.

“What –“

“I’m going to cut open his brain,” Ben tells me, and his voice is untouched by his activity.  “To find out why he lied.”

And my orgasm appears in that same moment as the answer and dread and desire form a crushing embrace and jump from heights precarious and drown: down down down.

It all vanishes in a breath, I find myself sitting up in bed, panting and throbbing, confused between the _here_ and the _there_.  I am alone and it is quiet but I realize what awoke me was a steady tattoo of knuckles upon my front door.

“Obe my love, can I come in please?  Obe?  You awake in there?”

I require him to do that every morning…I figure Taran will appreciate it more if he makes the effort to be invited in.  I climb out of bed and walk over to the door.

“Have you showered?” I call out.

“Yes dear.”

I let him in and although he’s not out-of-character cheerful, he does give me a kiss and a smirk, which is all he can manage before noon.  I fix breakfast and we talk about random things; the content isn’t important; again, it’s the effort.

I allowed Taran to move into the apartment across the hall.  Owning the building makes these kinds of decisions easy.  Having my own space, and quiet when I choose, allows us to peacefully co-exist, and he is comforted by my proximity.

“You might not want to read the paper, luv,” he tells me as he takes a cup of tea out to the balcony.  “The lead story is about You-Know-Who.”

“What about You-Know-Who?”

“The whole lot had to go up for their arraignment yesterday, because there were weapons and bombs and so forth found in their possession.  The government being very disapproving of such things.”

“They do tend to be.”

“I know you were trying to avoid it, so, just skip that section.”

I watched Taran read it, though, focusing his mind upon the absurdity with the assistance of caffeine and nicotine.  I enjoy watching him in repose – the beauty he wears as easy as any unconscious bodily function - that is one thing which has never changed.

I wash the skillet and think about the dream.

_“You don’t need to cut open his brain,” I tell Ben._

_“But this is the experiment.”_

_“I already know what’s in his brain.  Disasters, and me.”_

_“Is there a distinction between the two?” he asks._

_“Maybe,” I answer.  “But maybe not.”_


End file.
